Historical richness: ‘Threadbare’ by Jane Loeb Rubin
I reviewed US author Jane Loeb Rubin’s debut novel In the Hands of Women last year. Her second novel has been released recently and is actually a prequel to the first, as it tells the story of the experiences of refugees and immigrants in New York in the late 1800’s.
Once again there is a treasure trove of historical riches in this book. The main character is Tillie, a girl whose aspirations to attend high school are cut short by the tragic death of her mother from breast cancer. Tillie is left in charge of helping her father run their farm in Harlem, on what was then the northern outskirts of the city. She also keeps house and looks after her younger siblings, including Hannah, who is the main character featured in In the Hands of Women. In this new novel we get a fuller understanding of the tough circumstances in which Hannah’s life began, and the sacrifices made by her older sister.
Tillie marries at sixteen and fortunately – for it’s a match arranged in part by the local Rabbi – it is a mostly happy one. However her new husband brings her to live in the tenements of New York’s lower east side, notorious for their terrible squalor and poverty. The plan is to stay here only temporarily until they can save enough to move to a better area.
Tillie’s refuge is the local Jewish centre with its lending library, where she begins teaching English to the many people from Europe crowding into the city.
She helps her husband with his business selling buttons to the burgeoning clothing trade in the city, and becomes fascinated by fashions and the beautiful clothing she sees, but can never afford. During this time the family experience the trauma of the infectious diseases that run rampant through the poorly ventilated apartment buildings, and the death of an infant.
As an aside, I looked on Google maps to get an idea of the areas being described in the book. I was pleased to note that in the district where Tillie and Abe first live, there is now a museum dedicated to telling the stories of the many immigrant communities who lived here from the nineteenth century. The link to the Tenement Museum is here, if you are interested. If I ever get to New York City, it will be on my ‘to do’ list for sure.
As Abe’s business grows they move to a newer apartment and things begin to look up for the family. With her best friend Sadie, Tillie starts a business, making kits for poorer women to be able to sew their own clothes, using patterns rather like the ones my own mother used to buy, to sew for herself and her family.
I always love learning the ‘back story’ of a place, a company or industry, and Threadbare provides so much of the history of ‘Gilded Age’ New York – which was anything but gilded for its poorer citizens, especially women. Contraceptive devices and abortions were illegal then and made life so much harder for poor women and their families – something that Tillie herself experiences. There is also the scourge of diseases such as tuberculosis and women’s cancers, at a time when germ theory was a relatively new idea and surgical and other medical treatments still far from those we would recognise today.
Especially vivid in Threadbare is the way in which women in business were ignored, patronised, or ridiculed. Tillie’s husband must accompany her to meetings with potential business partners even though the ideas being pitched were hers and Sadie’s.
As in the best historical fiction, Threadbare offers opportunities to learn about the past while enjoying an engrossing story about believable and sympathetic characters. The ups and downs of Tillie’s life had me cheering her on, metaphorically speaking, and hoping that the many obstacles lined up against her could disappear. They don’t, of course, but in the process of her dealing with them we see what determination and courage look like.
As always with such stories, I drew particular pleasure from the fact that Tillie is inspired by the author’s real-life great-grandmother, Mathilde, who had arrived with her family from Germany in the 1860s. I can’t think of a better way to honour an ancestor than by writing a book inspired by their life!
Threadbare is published in 2024 by Level Best Books.
A book with heart: ‘In the Hands of Women’ by Jane Loeb Rubin
This novel opens in Baltimore, USA, in 1900. Hannah Isaacson is one of a small group of women admitted to Johns Hopkins Medical School, in the face of doubt and opposition from the men who dominate and control everything about healthcare and medical education, including for women. She is determined to achieve her goal of working as a qualified doctor in obstetrics.
To do so, she has to study and work hard and find a way around the demands and questionable practices from some doctors who don’t put the interests of patients first.
She becomes increasingly concerned about the rising number of women she has to deal with who are the victims of botched abortions. The stark reality of women’s lives at this time led some to choose this way of dealing with an unwanted pregnancy: middle-class and ‘society’ women to avoid shame for themselves and their families; poor women because they cannot afford another mouth to feed.
Contraceptive devices were illegal under Federal US laws at the time – women left with very few choices regarding family planning and their own health needs.
Hannah wants to work to change all this.
After she is qualified, she moves back to her home town of New York City to work in a major Jewish hospital there, and meets other women with similar aims, including the real-life Margaret Sanger, a pioneer in areas of women’s birth control and suffrage.
When Hannah tries to save the life of a woman dying after a botched abortion, she is arrested and incarcerated at the notorious Blackwell’s Workhouse, where she is horrified at appalling neglect and abuse of inmates. Her experiences here add to her determination to address the devastating effects of poverty on women, especially among the communities of immigrants pouring into New York from Europe and Ireland.
When she is finally released, she has to claw back her reputation and career, and while doing so, develops a plan to create women’s health services in the poorest parts of the city.
This is a carefully researched novel, with a mix of real-life and imagined characters. I love that part of the inspiration for one of its central women, was the author’s great-grandmother. And I enjoyed learning about the beginnings of modern hospital care and obstetric services in an important US centre and its immigrant populations, especially Jewish people from Europe escaping anti-semitism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Hannah is a believable character. She is determined, but not without anxieties and insecurities. Her experiences with men add complications and leave her questioning her own instincts. Many readers will relate to that side of Hannah. However, despite all the challenges confronting her, she does not lose sight of her goals to better the lives of others. She is smart, sensitive and empathic. Her dealings with the men in charge of institutional funds and regulations allow her to develop some wily negotiation skills!
I enjoyed In the Hands of Women: an engrossing novel with themes and characters I could care about. There is a prequel on the way by Jane Loeb Rubin which I look forward to reading on its release.
In the Hands of Women was published by Level Best Books in May 2023.
My thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for a review copy.
