Lessons from "Looking for Jane"

This book gave my book club lots to talk about.

This book by Heather Marshall touched me in many ways. I’ve been wanting to read it for a while and as it relates to the story I’m writing I thought it might be good research. Heather Marshall did a great job with this story of motherhood and everything that it entails. She introduces us to Angela Creighton, Dr. Evelyn Taylor, and Nancy Mitchell. Each of their story lines begin disconnected, but they grow together by the end. In 2017, Angela and her wife are going through invitro, trying to have a baby. In 1960, Evelyn is an unwed teenager, sent to St. Agnes, to hid her baby from the world and give it up for adoption. In 1979, Nancy is a young adult meeting her cousin who plans to have an illegal abortion.

In my current dual-timeline manuscript, I want to show what a secret can do to the individual who decides to keep one and the group it affects, whether that’s a family or couple. How a lie or untold truth can fester and destroy the lives of those who hide it and those who it touches. And I want to show that motherhood takes all shapes and sizes. Mothers can be married or unmarried or all the many forms we know. They can be humans, animals, humans who mother animals. I know a lot of ‘dog moms.’ A mother’s love will care, nurture, and grow fierce to protect her child. That is one of the themes from my story.

I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be a mother when I was a young adult. But after meeting my husband and falling in love, I begin to change my mind. And of course, I’m glad I did, because we have an awesome daughter today. And that choice was mine and later, ours to make. Choice has been withheld over the years from many groups, but I want to show how one choice can trickle down through generations. How one secret can continue to change the lives of the ones that follow after, and how if revealed, that secret will change them in profound ways.

In Looking for Jane, the women’s stories start with a wayward letter found by Angela in a piece of antique furniture at her workplace. The first line of the novel reads:

“It was a perfectly ordinary day when a truly extraordinary letter was delivered to the wrong mailbox.”

Angela’s quest to get this very important letter to its rightful owner spurs her journey, and she’s diligent in searching. The mother who wrote the letter touches her soul. As we follow their stories unfold. The theme of motherhood and a women’s desire to become a mother or not is woven artlessly into the plot and I was pulled in by their individual tales. I wanted Angela to find the rightful owner of the letter and become pregnant. I wanted Evelyn to get through her trial and have a wonderful life. I wanted Nancy to save her friend and find love.

I learned a lot in this book about how women’s lives were treated before I was born. The way women as a whole had no choice in so many of the major decisions of our lives and of the dedicated women who tried to change the world for the better. I studied the mothers in this story and how their choices affected themselves, those around them, and those they loved.

In Heather Marshall’s author’s note, she says Looking for Jane is

“about motherhood. About wanting to be a mother and not wanting to be a mother, and all the gray areas in between.”

The book explores all areas of motherhood and all the forms and fashions of being a mother. It’s not one to be missed and brings the current struggle for a women’s and man’s choice in parenthood decisions into a full circle of understanding. I give this book a big 4.5 Stars!!

I hope that my story can live up to the strong writing in Looking for Jane. If you choose to read Heather Marshall’s book, you won’t be disappointed. And someday, I hope you feel the same way about mine.