The Reluctant Womb

In Blair’s historical novel, based on true events, three white college friends navigate the pressures of unwanted pregnancies and racism in the early 1960s.

Thea Miller and Chris Christenson meet at the University of Michigan in September of 1961. Their friendship is immediate and intense. In February of 1962, Cilla Wood, who has injured her back rehearsing for a Broadway show in New York, arrives as an older first-semester freshman and meets Thea and Chris; the duo becomes a trio. On summer break, Cilla takes a job in Seattle, where she meets her true love: Joseph Bomani, a Black man from Tanganyika who is studying at the Kansas University. Meanwhile, inspired by her friend Frank, Thea joins him doing volunteer work in San Francisco, and Chris heads off to do volunteer work in Jamaica, where she falls in love with a local Black leader named Winston. Over the next school year, Cilla faces a pregnancy scare, Chris finds herself pregnant and decides on an illegal abortion, and Thea becomes pregnant and chooses to have the baby and put her up for adoption. Blair’s narrative is an exploration of the emotional, psychological, societal, and familial complexities and challenges regarding abortion, adoption, and interracial dating, the aftereffects of which linger throughout her characters’ adult years. The author captures the angst and ethos of campus life in the early, pre–Roe v. Wade 1960s and bakes in a primer on the period’s history, referencing the Cuban Missile Crisis, the blatant racism, the misogyny of the medical profession, and the burgeoning Civil Rights movement (“A meeting of Students for a Democratic Society. She wondered what kind of group it was. For Democrats? If she’d been old enough to vote in the 1960 election, she’d have voted for Kennedy. Maybe she’d look into it”). This homage to loving friendships also touches on the issues of mental illness and bisexuality. Blair’s prose is conversational and accessible, vividly evoking a time when social values were on the cusp of great change.

An engaging, unsettling, and emotional story that meaningfully engages with fraught social issues.