Series Mania Forum and Best-Seller to Box-Office recommend one book to adapt into a TV series. For more info, contact us on booktoscreen@seriesmania.com.
This week, discover Looking for Jane by Heather Marshall.
LOOKING FOR JANE
By Heather Marshall
- Genre: Drama, Historical Fiction
- Language: English
- To be published in Spring 2022 by Simon & Schuster
- Translations:
Canada: Simon & Schuster (Sarah St Pierre)
UK & Commonwealth: Hodder & Stoughton/Hachette (Sara Adams)
Dutch: De Fontein
Portuguese (SA): Companhia das Letras - Adaptation rights available: Yes
Why should you adapt this book into a TV series?
A purposeful and compelling historical fiction, based on real events that occurred in Canada in the 1960s and 1970s. The story, centring around three female characters over sixty years and their involvement in an underground abortion service, serves as an important call to arms, for even though Looking for Jane begins in the ’60s, its themes are still heartbreakingly relevant today.
What’s the story?
Set in Toronto. The novel spans the lives of three women, Evelyn, Nancy and Angela, over sixty years, all of whom have some involvement with the illegal underground abortion network known only by its code name: Jane.
As a teenager in the early 1960s, Dr. Evelyn Taylor was forced to give her baby up for adoption by St. Agnes’ Home for Unwed Women – a trauma she has never recovered from. Despite harrowing police raids and the constant threat of arrest, Evelyn joins the Jane Network as an abortion provider, determined to give other women a choice she never had.
In the 1980s, after discovering a shocking secret about her family history, that she is adopted, twenty-year-old Nancy Mitchell finds herself pregnant. Grappling with her decision, she locates ‘Jane’ to terminate her pregnancy, where she meets Dr. Evelyn Taylor, then covertly joins the network’s ranks. Decades later, in 2016, Angela Creighton finds a mysterious letter containing a life-shattering confession from Nancy Mitchell’s mother, Frances. Nancy herself was forcibly taken from her birth mother, Margaret Roberts, by St. Agnes’ Home for Unwed Mothers. Spanning six decades and set against the backdrop of feminist activism, Evelyn, Nancy, and Angela’s lives intertwine, culminating in the revelation that Evelyn Taylor is not who she says she is.
Comparable Book-to-screen adaptations:
- Dirty Dancing
- Call the Midwife
- Mrs America
About the author
Heather Marshall was born and raised near Toronto, Ontario, where she still lives with her family and their giant golden retriever.
After receiving an honours degree in history and political science, Heather completed Master’s degrees in Canadian history and political science. Her thesis papers for those degrees focused on the treatment of birth control in Canadian print media in the 1960s and the evolution of child care policy in Ontario, respectively.
Upon graduation, Heather worked for a city councillor, a Member of Provincial Parliament, and a Member of Parliament from 2012 through 2019 before moving to communications in a large labour union. Aside from writing, some of Heather’s favourite things include travelling, lavender, old houses covered in ivy (preferably with a good ghost story), cups of tea, roaming dusty bookshops with her husband, and being the first person to dip into a new jar of peanut butter. Looking for Jane is Heather’s debut novel.
Contact for more info: booktoscreen@seriesmania.com