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Aug 21, 2017brangwinn rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
As usual, historical novels that explore an unappreciated segment of society proves to be interesting reading. Mid-century New York was filled with immigrants, including women who found themselves with children they could not afford, and no legal way to protect themselves from bearing more children. When Axie Muldoon and her two siblings are sent on the orphan’s train to Illinois, she refuses to stay and returns to New York City. She finds her mother and watches her mother die delivering another child. Axie finds herself apprenticed to a midwife who also provides abortions. Going into business for herself, Axie and her husband find there’s an eager market among the wealthy for birth control and abortions. Of course, not only are abortions against the law but the selling of birth control raises the ire of the law. She is jailed…..but it isn’t the end of how she helps women.