📖 Book of my Month ~ In the Family Way by Laney Katz Becker

HQ
3 June 2025
Thanks to the publisher for my copy of this book

Ohio, 1965. Every week a group of suburban housewives meet for their Tuesday card game, sharing gossip, advice and confidences.

Lily Berg has the perfect life. She’s married to a doctor, with an infant daughter and another on the way. She can’t let her husband know she’s struggling but she knows she can trust her friends. Becca, Lily’s best friend and next-door neighbour, is everything Lily isn’t. She’s messy and brash and never on time for anything. When she falls pregnant with a fourth child she desperately can’t afford, she turns to Lily. Although Lily’s little sister, Rose, got married last year, she’s not ready to give up her independence. Her modern marriage appears to be perfect, but behind closed doors things are very different. And Betsy is fifteen, pregnant and frightened. When Lily takes her in, from the local home for unwed mothers, she has no idea how much it will shake up all of their lives.

Over six months, the group will be put to the test by secrets, forced to make impossible decisions and face up to a society that isn’t ready for women to have their own dreams and ambitions.

📖 My Review

Set in suburban Ohio in the mid-1960s, this is the poignant story of a group of women who meet regularly to play canasta where they share the small details of their daily lives and gossip about what’s going on in their community. However, scratch beneath the surface and each of the women are facing their own problems which will have devastating consequences in a world which offers women little independence or freedom. Marriage and motherhood is seen as the pinnacle of success but as Lily, Rose, Becca, Sarah and fifteeen year old Betsy discover pregnancy comes with consequences and sometimes painful decisions need to be made.

Reproductive health is a thread which runs through the story binding each of the characters together in such a unique way and as each of their personal challenges are revealed so a common sisterhood is forged and strengthened. Each character resonated, their individual stories both heartbreaking and uplifting, each expressing an emotional commitment in a powerful story about strong women who did what they had to do regardless of the consequences. 

Impeccably researched, In the Family Way is a story about women, for women and acts as a timely reminder of how far we have come in terms of being in control of our reproductive health and yet it also reiterates that marriage, pregnancy, abortion, domestic abuse, rape and divorce are as relevant today as they were then, and that women are just as vulnerable when choices are taken away from them, or even denied them. The story had such an emotional and powerful impact on me that I am delighted to make it the Book of my Month for June.

About the Author

Laney Katz Becker is a award winning author and writer. A native Ohioan , she now resides on the east coast of South Florida with her husband.

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