Lynne Baumgardt

Sequestered Lynne Baumgardt

Sequestered takes place 1973, six years after the race riots in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Shelley Sommers has been sequestered on a jury for 26 days with no end in sight. One young black man is on trial for murdering another young black man during an inner city neighborhood feud. To pass the long, frustrating hours, and to help sort out her own embarrassingly passionate attraction to one of the bailiffs assigned to the jury, she decides to keep a journal, her own private "history". Isolated from society with strangers who are not allowed to discuss the on-going trial, 31-year-old Shelley, a Milwaukee Public School High School history teacher, is forced to take stock of her life and her marriage. She realizes that she does not miss her husband but also realizes that such a bizarre environment may engender bizarre reactions. Can she trust her feelings for handsome Neil Bronson, also a stranger to her? And although the jurors make every effort, they are ultimately split along racial lines when they must finally hammer out a verdict. Shelley surprises herself by tapping into unknown inner resources to help them find consensus. Her "history" becomes one of self-discovery.