“The story came to me,” explains writer Kerri Maher (1975, California). “In 2018 I was in the car on the way to meet a friend to see a movie at the cinema, listening to NPR and since this channel does long pieces about certain topics, I just heard one about the Jane Collective: those women who were part of this history in Chicago.”
“They were activists, feminists and fought for civil rights. They believed the abortion law was wrong. The organization grew organically from there, from a couple of girls making calls, to a group that realized they could take charge of the entire process,” he explains.
“Listening to this story I thought I couldn’t believe it,” he continues. “They were not doctors or nurses., they were just women who offered that process cheaply and very safely. I stopped the car. I knew I had to write about it. I immediately looked on Amazon to see if anyone had made it. There were a couple of non-fiction book titles, documentaries I saw, but no novels. I read a lot about the seventies. And I myself was born in 1975, so I’m not far off. It took me several years to write it, between 2018 and now. I finished a novel about Grace Kelly and before that another titled The Paris Bookstore and it was in 2020 when the publisher confirmed this book to me and I started with it,” he continues.
The writer at the Amapolas bookstore in October.
This book exists, she explains, because of the will of a large group of girls. Kerri Maher is the author of the book On the other side of the line (Navona), but speaks of at least five others who have been involved in the process. “I finally met my translator last night, Irene De la Torre, I love the work she has done for this Spanish edition,” she says and adds to the group her editor, her agent, who were especially committed to this project, and the Madrid bookseller Laura Riñón of ‘Amapolas en Octubre’, where it is presented and distributed.
On the other side of the line
“I wanted to focus, above all, on telling a story,” he explains. “When we write something based on real events, perhaps we always think about what things should not happen again. While I was writing this text, the new 2022 law came out where I live, in the United States, and it was shocking to me, although not surprising.
The central theme of the book would be “women helping women. I was impressed by their courage. These young women did these illegal acts for others. They were not medically trained, but 11,000 abortions were performed in Chicago in these years, with very few complications. And this is surprising. I couldn’t imagine myself doing something like that, so I wanted to understand what might move a group to do it. My novels usually start with a question, so I started writing.”
He adds how “many of the real women of the Jane Collective are still alive, and that’s why I want to clarify that my characters are not real. Verónica, my protagonist, is pregnant and together with a childhood friend, Patty, they begin to talk about these issues. They wouldn’t be friends if they met today and these friends are important in real life because they expand your world as an adult. It forces you to reexamine your point of view. Margaret’s character is a young college professor in her first year and she falls in love with a man who is the ex-husband of another of the book’s protagonists.”
The underlying themes of the story would be, for her, “marriage, friendship, solidarity, love…”. Another issue is this idea of ”women having it all.” In the eighties, in America, the use of the phrase became popular ‘Women can have it all’ . This idea that they can have a family, children, a happy marriage and a career… now we know that no one can have it all, which is a question of priorities. Although they did not have that expression in the seventies, that idea was brewing in the public consciousness. “You have to make significant decisions because you can’t have everything.”
The historical novel as a review
“I think it’s always good to have fiction based on true stories,” he explains. “Historical fiction in the United States is very popular, for many years we have had a lot based on World War II, and now there are more and more books set in the late sixties and early seventies. I think what is seeks Today when we buy a book it is an escape. Real life news is really depressing, so when people buy a book a lot of times it’s just for entertainment, and I understand that,” he says. “It sounds like a cliché, but if I were aware of who was going to read it to me , I couldn’t write,” he clarifies.
“I think of my editors. With this particular topic I wanted to present a balanced view of the facts, looking at it from different points of view, for me, not just for the audience. She wanted to tell a good story, a true story, about how to be a woman with these problems,” explains the author.
Regarding the structure of the novel, he comments that “the first and last part are like a prologue and epilogue. In the United States you can’t call the prologue that because no one will read it. The novel takes place in 1971 and 1972. The prologue is called 1969 because that”.
“I wanted the characters to be believable, but to be from that era,” he shares. “I made many drafts. Each one I sent it to up to five people and waited for their feedback. It’s part of my process. At least 10 people were on it for this book. And yes, there is a certain solidarity in my way of writing,” he clarifies.
Maher, writer of best-seller international The Paris Bookstore, is also a professor of creative writing at Emerson (Boston). Fan of The path of the artistwhich you used to search for your next topic, is working on a story about the summer of love in 1969 in San Francisco.
In this interview, he comments on On the other side of the line that “perhaps it will not have as many editions as the previous ones, because the perception of the subject is very American. However, here in Spain, the women who have read the book, even if the issue of abortion is not so topical like in the United States right now, they believe that writing about the situations experienced in the seventies is very current now.
