WITHOUT PRECEDENT

The Life of Susie Marshall Sharp
By Anna R. Hayes

This is an extraordinary biography of an even more extraordinary woman who made history as the first woman judge in the state of North Carolina and the first woman in the United States to be elected chief justice of a state Supreme Court. Born in 1907, Susie Sharp dedicated her life to the legal profession and made her mark as one of the pioneers in judicial reform in the state. Anna Hayes, herself an attorney, spent ten years interviewing dozens of family members, friends and colleagues of Judge Sharp and poring over mountains of legal paperwork and the judge’s own detailed journals, to tell the fascinating story of this brilliant and enormously complicated woman. The book is beautifully written and reveals not only the great personal sacrifice it took to be the consummate professional that Susie Sharp became, but also the toll that heartrending family tragedies took upon her life. Judge Sharp was thought to be the “quintessential spinster,” but Hayes gives a fascinating account, with facts gleaned from Sharp’s private journals, of her several poignant love affairs, affairs previously unknown even to close family members. I could not put this book down. I had the good fortune to meet Judge Sharp when I was a teenager. She had relatives in Southport, my hometown, who were dear friends of mine, and I saw her on several occasions when she visited them. She  made an indelible impression on me at the time, and those memories of her made this book even more interesting and appealing to me. A recent review of the biography perhaps says it best.

-“-Extremely well written and meticulously documented. It presents a vivid portrait of a highly intelligent, courageous woman who braved many personal tragedies while carving a place of honor in the state's judiciary history. “

--A.C. Snow, Raleigh News & Observer