o by Steve Spelg elha lte r/Meg McCoy

Arts & Entertainment

Legal Thriller

Former Detroiter draws on professional experience in
debut novel about a female prosecutor who fights
to protect women against domestic violence.

Suzanne Chessler

Special to the Jewish News

A

llison Leotta sees much of the
seamier side of urban living
as a sex crimes and domestic
violence prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney's
Office in Washington, D. C.
She also sees moments of love, courage
and healing when the justice
system succeeds.
Both sides of Leotta's
experiences enter into her
first novel, Law of Attraction
(Touchstone Hardcover/
Simon & Schuster; $25),
which she will introduce
7-8:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 21,
at Borders Books & Music in
Birmingham, the city where
she spent some teenage years.
"My job is not the type you leave at
the office says Leotta, 37, a graduate
of Birmingham's Groves High School,
Michigan State University and Harvard Law
School. "I was thinking about it all the time.
"If I went to yoga class, I wouldn't be
focusing on my posture; I'd be thinking
about a victim I was trying to relocate.

Once I had kids, I was scoping out every
room to see who could be a potential child
molester.
"Eventually, I decided I needed to put
my knowledge and imagination to better
use, and I started writing fiction to pro-
cess all of this?'
Law of Attraction tells about a case being
litigated by the main character, prosecutor
Anna Curtis, who tries to help an
abuse victim who is unwilling to
testify against the father of her
children.
When the victim is murdered,
Curtis probes the truth behind
the crime while coming to terms
with the romantic relationship
she has had with the public
defender opposing her.
"Anna Curtis has my resume
and some of my geography, but
she is not me," says Leotta, daughter of
Diane Reis Harnisch of West Bloomfield
and Alan Harnisch of Troy. "Anna needed to
have a darker background than I had.
"I had a really nice childhood, a lovely
upbringing in Farmington Hills and
Birmingham, but my character comes from
Flint, where her dad worked in the auto

industry, got laid off and spiraled down-
ward."
Leotta's upbringing helped direct her
career.
"My dad is an attorney and was a pros-
ecutor in Detroit during the 1970s," she
recalls. "He used to come home with stories
about his job and was proud of what he did
fighting crimes. I always had in my mind
that one of the things I was interested in
doing was being a prosecutor."
After a year of clerking for an Ohio judge,
Leotta moved to Washington, D.C., and did
consumer litigation for three years. She
became a sex crimes prosecutor in 2003.
Leotta's religious experiences were not as
straightforward as her career. She was raised
in a two-religion household, where her dad
was Lutheran and her mom was Jewish.
Leotta, who attended Temple Shir
Shalom in West Bloomfield as well as
church, decided to embrace Judaism.
Her decision was based on learning the
Holocaust experiences of her grand-
mother, Bertl Reis of Novi, and reacting to
a visit through the Dachau Concentration
Camp Memorial Site in Germany.
"I want to move my Jewish background
forward and rebel against people who try to

Jews

ir
wir

Nate Bloom

Special to the Jewish News

Film Notes

Opening Friday,
Oct.15, are the new
Woody Allen film,
You Will Meet a Tall
Dark Stranger, and
Freakonomics, a
documentary based
on the best-selling
book by former New
York Times journal-
ist Stephen Dubner,
47, and University of
Chicago economist
Steven Levitt, 43.
Dubner also is
known for the 1998
book Turbulent
Stephen
Souls: A Catholic
Dubner
Son Returns to his
Jewish Family. Dubner's parents,

50

October 14 2010

both born Jewish, converted to
Catholicism and raised their children
Catholic. Dubner opted to embrace
Judaism as an adult and is a practic-
ing Jew.
Stranger is a "grass is always
greener" tale about two married
couples. Alfie (Anthony Hopkins)
experiences a late middle age crisis
and decides to pursue his lost youth
by leaving his wife, Helena (Gemma
Jones), and taking up with a young
call girl. Helena is so shell-shocked
that she starts to follow a charla-
tan fortuneteller. Alfie and Helena's
daughter, Sally (Naomi Watts), is
unhappy in her marriage to Greg,
a struggling novelist (Josh Brolin)
and develops a crush on her boss
(Antonio Banderas). Greg, meanwhile,
is smitten with the beauty of a neigh-
bor (Frieda Pinto). Like Allen's recent
films, this one is set in Britain.
Freakonomics looks at diverse top-

ics, like cheating,
through an economic
model that explains
how people really
act. The documen-
tary consists of six
case studies, acted
out by real actors,
Eugene
and there is some
Jarecki
humor in the film.
Each case study was
directed by a different leading docu-
mentary filmmaker, including Eugene
Jarecki (Why We Fight).

Mazel Toy

Miller and Rogen

On Sept. 28,
actor-writer
Seth Rogen,
28, announced
that he and his
girlfriend of four
years, Lauren
Miller, also 28,

Author Allison Leotta is a
federal sex crimes prosecutor in
Washington, D.C.

[deny] it:' says Leotta, who has two sisters,
Kerry Hughes of Waterford and Tracey
Fitzgerald of Chicago.
In 1997, Leotta had an adult bat mitz-
vah at the Harvard Hillel in Cambridge,
Mass. In 2002, at the Henry Ford Museum
in Dearborn, Rabbi Dannel Schwartz per-
formed her marriage ceremony to federal
attorney Michael Leotta, who holds Jewish
heritage through his mother and Catholic
heritage through his father.
With a 1-year-old and a 3-year-old, the
Leottas are looking for a temple to fully
raise their children as Jewish.
"I started the book when I was pregnant
with my first son," the author says. "I think
I had a biological clock for kids and writ-
ing, and they both went off at about the
same time.
"I started getting up at 5 a.m. and wrote
for two hours before going to work. After

were engaged. Miller, a filmmaker who
has had small parts in several Rogen
films, was raised on Long Island and
in Lakeland, Fla.
In 2003, she wrote and directed a
short dramatic film, Happy Holidays,
about the difficulties a Jewish middle-
school student faces when she is
inundated with Christmas, including wi lki
an assignment from her teacher that
she (and the rest of the class) should
write a letter to Santa Claus.
ft*
The film is semi-autobiographical.
Miller was a cheerleader at her
Florida high school, but she raised a
stir when she refused to march in the
city's Christmas parade with the rest
of her squad.
Happy Holidays was shown at the
Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival. The
festival board was so taken with the
film that they created, on the spot, a
Best Student Film Award and gave it
to Miller.

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