Jane’s Cure

Jane Angier’s father is a trapper in 1840s New Brunswick. The entire family shares in the work, which takes them into the wilderness to trap prey and to towns and villages to sell pelts. When Jane’s sister dies from “ship’s fever,” and her parents die soon after, Jane is marooned on Hospital Island, isolated from the mainland across Queen’s Bay to assist the midwife, Biddy, nurse the sick. After they return to Queen’s Bay, Biddy asks Jane to become her apprentice. Suddenly orphaned and more accustomed to life in the back woods, Jane has few options and agrees to Biddy’s proposal.

Upon Biddy’s death a couple of years later, Jane inherits Biddy’s house and midwife practice, caring for women giving birth and ordinary ailments of their families. She’s also well-known for dispensing “Jane’s Cure,” an herbal mixture which helps prevent pregnancy, and for potions that help women abort when they’re unable to care for or safely deliver more children. The town’s doctor, Charles Clawson, is angered by the competition for patients and derisive of midwifery as quackery. When a thirteen-year-old girl is brought to her for removal of a “blockage,” Jane determines the girl is pregnant and too small to deliver the baby, a baby conceived after repeated rape by her foster father. Jane’s potion initiates early labor. The young mother’s life is saved, but the baby dies shortly after delivery. Dr. Clawson, also a magistrate, has Jane arrested for unlawful assistance in ending a pregnancy and murder of the aborted fetus.

The book’s action begins after Jane’s arrest and as she awaits a spring trial. The succeeding chapters unravel in greater detail her compassionate care among the women of Queen’s Bay and events that led to her arrest. There are several distracting mechanical errors, but the book is very well written and well researched. The author uses foreboding effectively at several points to build tension and add backstory. “The awakening of the spring creatures meant my trial date was close. I had survived the winter and was looking forward to telling all, especially the story that condemned me.” Only later do readers learn what act will condemn her. After Jane is sentenced to fourteen years in prison, the jail warden, who has become a friend, and the grateful women of Queen’s Bay conspire to free her.

This book will not be for everyone. Jane expresses sexual feelings for Dr. Clawson’s wife, Kathryn, and for a young man named Jimmy with whom she has a daughter. She has no desire to become a wife (one man’s property) and strongly supports a woman’s right to establish her own identity and boundaries in a society that believes a woman’s highest calling is to birth as many children as she conceives—or as many as the men in her life force her to bear. It illustrates, through a range of situations and anecdotes, the plight of women in any era searching for the right to control their own bodies and circumstances. I highly recommend it.