Spotlight & Giveaway: ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS CALL by Kerri Maher

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Kerri Maher to HJ!

Hi Kerri and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS CALL!

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

All You Have To Do Is Call is the story of three very different women—Veronica, Patty, and Margaret—who come together in the most unlikely ways to support each other and thousands of other women in their hours of need. The novel is about the joys and complexities of female friendship, marriage, and parenting.
Loosely based on the real-life Jane Collective, the novel takes us back to a time in the history of reproductive rights that feels eerily like our own, 50 years later—and it provides hope that the arc of history does indeed bend toward justice, sisterhood, and freedom.
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

–From the end of the Prologue: “…even though most of them could only be called ‘good abortions,’ every time the blindfold went on and a woman was rendered powerless, Veronica found herself thinking There has to be a better way.”
–“What do Vietnam and vaginas have in common?” (You’ll have to read the book for the answer!)
–This might seem unorthodox, but another favorite line is from my Author’s Note: “…it seems to me that Jane is like the Knights of the Round table. Their story became the stuff of myth and legend and retelling the moment the first Jane took up a curette, as surely as the moment Arthur pulled the sword from the stone.”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

–I got the idea for the novel from an NPR news story about the Jane Collective that I heard in 2018, but I didn’t start writing it until 2020.
–For a long time, the working title was just an informal description: “The Jane Novel.” It took quite a bit of brainstorming between me, my editor and agent, and the marketing and sales teams, to come up with the right title. Although titles aren’t usually my strong suit, I was the one who came up with “All You Have To Do Is Call,” from “You’ve Got a Friend” by Carole King. The runner up was “Freedom’s Just Another Word,” from “Me and Bobby McGee” as sung by Janis Joplin.
–I listened to a lot of great late 60s and early 70s music while researching the book, and Berkley put together a great soundtrack with all the songs I mention in the novel on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3G7LCMBa0DsQPm5sOE8ubO
 

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

–A scene that never fails to give me goosebumps is toward the end of the novel when Margaret (trying not to give any spoilers here) tells the eight year old daughter of her boyfriend Gabe that her mother, one of the founders of Jane, was like Joan of Arc: “She was a woman a long time ago who took matters into her own hands and fought for what she believed in, even though a lot of men thought she couldn’t do it. But she showed them all they were wrong.”
–I also laughed a lot while writing some of the gallows humor bantered about by the women of Jane while they were on breaks from work, like the joke above.

Readers should read this book….

….because you’ll want to know if Matt is cheating on Patty, if Margaret will stay with Gabe, how Veronica’s pregnancy will turn out, and if Jane will get busted by the police.
…and because the fight for reproductive freedom is far from over, and we need to be reminded of where we were 50 years ago so we don’t get all the way back there again. We also need everyday heroines to believe in, to look up to, and learn from, and Veronica, Patty, Margaret and their friends are just that.
 

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

I am working on a dual-timeline novel set in the 1960s and 2010s, about a woman who goes looking for her aunt who disappeared into the San Francisco counter-culture revolution. Family secrets, a road trip, a winery, and the stunning beauty of the California coast!
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: Berkley can offer one giveaway copy of ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS CALL by Kerri Maher

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: What character did you most relate to in All You Have To Do Is Call? Have you ever taken a big risk for a cause, or changed your mind about a person or a social issue? Why?

 
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Book Info:

A gripping and uplifting novel based on the true story of the Jane Collective and the brave women who worked in the shadows for our right to choose, from the USA Today bestselling author of The Paris Bookseller.

Chicago, early 1970s. Who does a woman call when she needs help? Jane.

The best-known secret in the city, Jane is an underground health clinic composed entirely of women helping women, empowering them to embrace their futures by offering reproductive counseling and safe, illegal abortions. Veronica, Jane’s founder, prides herself on the services she has provided to thousands of women, yet the price of others’ freedom is that she leads a double life. When she’s not at Jane, Veronica plays the role of a conventional housewife—a juggling act that becomes even more difficult during her own high-risk pregnancy.

Two more women in Veronica’s neighborhood are grappling with similar disconnects. Margaret, a young professor at the University of Chicago, secretly volunteers at Jane as she falls in love with a man whose attitude toward his ex-wife increasingly disturbs her. Patty, who’s long been content as a devoted wife and mother, has begun to sense that something essential is missing from her life. When her runaway younger sister, Eliza, shows up unexpectedly, Patty must come to terms with what it really means to love and support a sister.

In this historic moment, when the personal was nothing if not political, Veronica, Margaret, and Patty risk it all to help mothers, daughters, sisters, and friends. With an awe-inspiring story and appealing characters, All You Have to Do Is Call celebrates the power of women coming together in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
 
 

Meet the Author:

Kerri Maher is the USA Today bestselling author of The Paris Bookseller, The Girl in White Gloves, The Kennedy Debutante, and, under the name Kerri Majors, This Is Not a Writing Manual: Notes for the Young Writer in the Real World. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and lives with her daughter and dog in a leafy suburb west of Boston, Massachusetts.