Full Circle by Katherine Gomez
What's It About?
Liz is a single professional woman trying to navigate the intricacies of a career-oriented life and what society deems is the role of womanhood.Meet Liz Castillo, a professional woman in New York City in the 1980s. She has a master’s degree in business, a high-pressure job with a global ad agency, and a 22nd-floor apartment overlooking the Hudson River. She has dreams of a promotion, but everything is interrupted when she discovers a potentially life-altering truth — she is pregnant.
A compelling novel, Full Circle by Katherine F. Gomez unfolds during a time marked by the founding of Ms. Magazine and the Roe vs. Wade decision that gave women the right to abortion. Gomez describes Liz’s circumstances in a way that keeps pages turning.
Young Career Woman
It was Liz’s brief fling with Christian, an artist passing through Manhattan on his way to Paris, that led to her pregnancy. One evening after work, she had arrived home to an empty apartment and his set of keys in the mailbox. Christian’s abrupt departure leaves Liz on her own to deal with her new dilemma. Liz is on the fast track at work, but in these nascent feminist years, a baby would threaten her chances of keeping her job, let alone being promoted.
Liz chooses to end her pregnancy and spends months in a deep depression, avoiding social contacts and focusing on her job. She finally reaches out to an old friend, Diane, also a successful career woman. Soon Liz becomes part of Diane and her husband’s social circle, “a group of smart, young professionals, all of whom are trying to achieve their dreams in the big city.”
As they ice skate at the rink on the roof of the Chelsea Piers, “Liz thinks of the day as perfect, but years will pass before its significance emerges. Most of this group will be life-long friends, and it all begins with this single, golden day when they come together for the first time.”
Diane and Matt share a house in the Hamptons and Liz joins them for summer weekends filled with friends, delicious meals and easy relaxation. Weekdays often end with drinks and dinner at Manhattan restaurants. Readers will enjoy the vicarious thrills of living in New York, where career is everything.
Wanting to “Have It All”
Liz is thrilled when she’s promoted to account supervisor overseeing Lever Brothers’ national roll-out of new brands of soap and shampoo. She gets a new secretary and her first office with a window. But, as a woman in a position traditionally held by men, she knows she has to tread carefully, demonstrating competence and knowledge without appearing arrogant.
As years pass and another romance leads nowhere, Liz begins to feel her life is empty. She begins to consider adopting a baby, even though being a single mother of any kind is still frowned upon. She realizes “she still has an ocean of love in her heart she wants to set free.”
But first, she needs to know what else is in her heart. Her therapist, Dahlia, helps Liz explore her humble beginnings. Her family lived paycheck-to-paycheck and believed success was marriage and motherhood. Liz sees how she covered up her feelings of inadequacy with false confidence and sophistication.
Coming Full Circle
As its title hints, Full Circle takes a circuitous journey and returns to the beginning of wisdom. As Dahlia tells Liz:
“There are people who live safe lives by distancing themselves from others. They feel secure, sterile, and untouchable, but their lives are small.
“There are other people who view life as a rich, enormous, and messy stew, in which they aim for happiness and risk emotional pain by opening themselves up to other people and diverse experiences. It brings complications, but also the possibility of deep satisfaction that you can’t experience if you close yourself off.”
Will Liz find the fulfillment she longs for? As the adage implies, it’s not the destination but the journey that matters. Enjoy the ride.
About Katherine Gomez:
Katherine F. Gomez won her first prize for writing at age 17 and has been writing ever since. She has a degree in Comparative Literature U.C. Berkeley as well as an MBA from the Haas School there. After graduate school, Katherine spent decades at a global, NYC advertising agency, eventually rising to Senior Partner.
For the last ten years of her career, she was Senior Editorial Director for a national organization that raises funds for cancer research. Her responsibilities included writing fundraising and corporate materials for the organization’s television and print advertising, direct mail, and web marketing efforts.
She now lives and writes fiction in the California Wine Country.
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