This book is not an easy read. If I had read it a couple of years ago, I would have been reminded of how far we’ve come from the days of back alley abortions, substandard reproductive health care and forced adoptions. Although abortion laws in Canada are still in place, we have taken a giant leap backward here with the Dobbs decision overturning Roe. It changes what should have been a historical perspective into a frightening look at where we are heading. I would say this book may now be categorized as historical fiction but if we stay on the current path, it will read as a contemporary novel.

The storylines of three Canadian women take us from 1960 to the present. They are all connected by a lost letter revealing a long-held family secret.

In 2017, antique store owner Angela finds a letter wedged in the back of a drawer. It is from an adoptive mother to her daughter. In the letter, she reveals that her daughter was in fact adopted and provides the name of the birth mother. Angela is moved by this since she, too, was adopted and was reunited with her own birth mother. She is determined to find the person it was meant for.

Over time, Angela’s research leads her to the Jane Network, an underground abortion web of doctors who risked arrest in 1970s Toronto to provide illegal terminations. 

Central to the story is Evelyn Taylor. As a pregnant teen In 1960, Evelyn was sent by her parents to a maternity home run by an unscrupulous nun and priest. She was traumatized by the unceasing punishment while waiting for her baby to be born, the cruel way she was forced to deliver the baby, and then give her up. This changed her life’s trajectory. Evelyn became a doctor who risked everything to provide women with the choice she was never given.

Nancy, the third protagonist, is a young woman uncomfortable in her own skin. As a college student, her grandmother makes a comment that raises her antenna and through her own sleuthing, she discovers she was adopted. Nancy also becomes pregnant while in college and finds her way to the Jane Network.

The author, Heather Marshall, did an excellent job connecting the harsh realities of the times with the characters. However on the downside, there were just too many issues raised. Angela, trying to get pregnant through IVF, the horror of the maternity homes, the selling of babies, the unscrupulous people who performed illegal abortion resulting in deaths, sterility, and trauma, the issue of secrets and lies told within families of adopted children, police raids. Each in itself is important but all told, it was just too much. I was worn out. I also felt the ending a bit too contrived. I didn’t think it fit. The richness of the book is that it was messy and real.

This book is an important reminder of how things were before Roe. We were complacent that the battle for reproductive rights was over. This novel reminds us of the life altering consequences when choice and proper medical care are taken away.