The Cable: A Novel

In 1923, when women were still fighting for a seat at the table, Cicely Adair found her own kingdom in the clatter and hum of the telephone exchange. She is a telephone operator by trade but no ordinary one: sharp-tongued, generous to a fault, and possessed of a moral stubbornness that refuses to bend to the genteel expectations heaped upon young women of her station. When her paths cross with the refined Jeanette Lucas, an unlikely friendship forms across the wire-thin boundaries of class, revealing how connection, whether carried on copper cables or strung between hearts, demands courage. Taggart captures the strange magic of modern life: voices traveling through invisible threads, strangers bound by conversations they'll never remember, and one woman's insistence on living according to her own compass. The Cable is a quiet revelation, a story about the extraordinary courage required to remain ordinary in a world that demands conformity.