In the Family Way

A book club novel in the vein of Lessons in Chemistry about the friendship between a group of suburban housewives and a teenage unwed mother as they navigate their pregnancies – both wanted and unwanted – in a time when abortion is illegal and before the women's movement has taken flight.

1965, Ohio.

At Raven House, teenage girls who have found themselves in the family way are partnered with suburban families to hide out and help out until their due date. Once their babies are given up for adoption, they agree to never speak to their host families again.

Fifteen-year-old Betsy Ann Eubanks had no idea that what she was doing could lead to a baby. Thankfully Mrs Berg – a perfect housewife and loving mother to a seventeen-month-old with another on the way – is happy to welcome her into her family and teach her about her body and how a woman is supposed to behave.

But the life of Lily Berg and her friends isn’t the idyll Betsy imagines. There’s Lily’s best friend, pregnant with a fourth child she desperately can’t afford; her neighbour who wants a baby more than anything but can’t seem to make them stick; and her sister, Rose, who is going to discover that her perfect husband is anything but.

In the Family Way is a powerful novel that grapples with perennial questions of womanhood – the role we play as wives, mothers, and people in our own right – in a time before feminism took flight.