Trapped in a granite cell, a nineteenth-century midwife awaits her trial for the crime of helping women time their pregnancies.

Set against a backdrop of a beautiful Canadian seaside town with ugly secrets, the novel illustrates the plight of women who dare to exercise control over their bodies.

“Do winter bears dream of being wild and carefree, perhaps sitting in a chokecherry bush, pulling down branches, and delicately nipping off the red fruit, unburdened with hungry cubs biting at nipples? Likely not, but it amuses me to think of it.

I would like to sleep through this winter and awake in the spring when my trial has already happened, and I have been found not guilty, and then I would unfold myself out of this awful hole, blinking from the shock of the sunlight.

— from Jane’s Cure
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