When Evelyn’s daughter was born, she too was taken away to be adopted.Įvelyn secreted a note to the adoptive parents and a pair of yellow booties in Jane’s blanket, and Evelyn always mourned this loss and made unsuccessful efforts to find Jane. Agnes’ Home for Unwed Mothers, where she was disowned.

Her parents gave her no choice but to be whisked off to St. In 1960, Evelyn’s fiancé died of a heart attack when she was already pregnant with their child. Angela starts looking for Nancy and eventually searches for Nancy’s birth mother, Margaret. The letter, sent by Frances to Nancy Mitchell, reveals that Nancy was adopted and encloses a note from Nancy’s birth mother. After Angela is fired from her job because of her pregnancy, she discovers a seven-year-old letter meant for the apartment upstairs. Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for this advanced reading copy.Īuthor’s Website: heathermarshallauthor.The story opens in 2017, with Angela, a gay woman who is managing her Aunt Jo’s antiques store. Beautiful, heartbreaking, necessary, and memorable.Īlso, be sure to read the Author’s Note at the end! This novel of brave and determined women is a must-read that honours countless untold stories of a past that’s been too long-silenced, that in other countries still exists. And based on the Author’s Note, it wasn’t, but rather what I imagine must have been months, if not years, of mining other women’s stories. The detail was so on point, the emotions, the scents, the texture: it all felt too real to simply be fiction. I often found myself wondering whether aspects of this novel were inspired by lived experience. It’s a story I’m sure I’ll be thinking about for weeks, from the details about homes for unmarried women I knew nothing about, to the details about back alley abortions I wished I’d known nothing about, to the fight for a woman’s right to choose, which I’d never really taken enough time to consider.Ĭlearly, Marshall is an excellent researcher. But women are powerful, women are fighters, and it is our emotions, our tenderness, that although sometimes viewed as a weakness, is what makes us strong – LOOKING FOR JANE explores all of this. Being a woman in a world that for so long saw us as second-class citizens (and in some cases still does) is not an easy feat.

Marshall doesn’t write in black and whites, but the world of greys we all live in, where moment to moment our feelings, our decisions, and our thoughts can shift and transform and merge where seemingly ‘wrong’ choices are never so simple, but understandable and often justified. The complexities of the women, their experiences, and the emotions portrayed in these pages always rang true. Heather Marshall’s LOOKING FOR JANE is powerful and important.Ī story of motherhood, a story of women, a story of our lack of choices and the fight to choose.

Looking for jane heather marshall