Meet author Jane Rubin, author of In the Hands of Women on Monday, July 15th at 6pm!
About Jane:
From Jane’s website:
A terrifying diagnosis, a genetic defect, and a lifelong fascination with the history of medicine led Jane Rubin to put pen to paper. After an ovarian cancer diagnosis in 2009, Jane, then a healthcare executive, poured her energy into raising research dollars for ovarian cancer and learning more about her familial roots. Her research led her to her great-grandmother, Mathilda (Tillie), who arrived in New York City in 1866, at sixteen married a man twelve years her senior, and later died of ‘a woman’s disease.’ Then the trail ran cold. With limited facts, she was determined to give Mathilda an exciting fictional life of her own. Jane was left imagining Tillie’s life, her fight with terminal disease, and the circumstances surrounding her death. Threadbare is dedicated to Tillie.
Her research of the history of New York City, its ultra-conservative reproductive laws, and the state of medicine during that era has culminated in a suspenseful, fast-paced, two-book historical series. Her engaging characters are confronted with antisemitism in New York City, their part in the suffragette movement, a dearth of reproductive rights, the infamous Blackwell’s Workhouse, and the perilous road to financial success. In the Hands of Women, published in May 2023, tells the story of Hannah, Tillie's younger (fictional) sister and her plight as one of the first ob-gyns in NYC.
Jane’s other publications include an essay memoir, Almost a Princess, My Life as a Two-Time Cancer Survivor (2009 Next Generation Indie Book Finalist), and multiple articles in the Coping with Cancer periodical. She writes a monthly blog/newsletter, Musings, reflecting on her writing journey.
In the Hands of Women
In the Hands of Women, a riveting historical suspense novel, centers on the life of Hannah Isaacson, an obstetrician in training, determined to improve medical safety for women in a time when women had few choices. This carefully researched work, set in Baltimore and New York City in the year 1900, when birth control and abortion were both illegal, leaves us contemplating whether history is repeating itself.
With the advent of obstetrics and anesthesia as distinct fields of practice at the turn of the twentieth century, hospital births rapidly gained popularity. Midwives, who previously cared for these women, began supplementing their shrinking incomes with abortions, sometimes performing dangerous midterm abortions with disastrous consequences.
Hannah, a devoted women’s advocate and suffragist, finds herself overwhelmed by the ignorance and medical needs of her patients, poor and wealthy. She is determined to make a difference and joins Margaret Sanger in her crusade to overturn the restrictive Comstock Laws prohibiting birth control. After coming to the aid of a woman dying from a butchered abortion, Hannah is charged with murder and sent to the terrifying Blackwell’s Prison to await her trial. With the support of influential friends, including the female trustees of Johns Hopkins Medical School, she challenges the Governor of New York with a novel proposition.