Book Title: ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS CALL
Character Name: Patty Buford
How would you describe your family or your childhood?
I had an idyllic childhood outside of Chicago. My mom and I were really close until my little sister Eliza arrived when I was 10. I’ll be honest – it took me a long time to get used to her, but I love her now as much as I loved my mom. I wish every day Mom was still alive.
What was your greatest talent?
I’m a pretty great mother, if I do say so myself.
Significant other?
Dr. Matt Buford, cardiologist. He’s my rock.
Biggest challenge in relationships?
I find change very difficult – and I had to do A LOT of it in 1972.
Do you have any enemies?
Me?
How do you feel about the place where you are now? Is there something you are particularly attached to, or particularly repelled by, in this place?
1972 was the hardest year of my life – harder than when Mom died, in a lot of ways. But it made me into the person I am today, and I wouldn’t do a thing differently.
Do you have children, pets, both, or neither?
I have three beautiful children – two girls and a boy. Tad keeps begging for a snake. A snake!!!
What do you do for a living?
Well, that would spoil a certain surprise….
Greatest disappointment?
Again, spoiler! Sheesh.
Greatest source of joy?
My loves – Matt, Eliza, Veronica, and my children.
What do you do to entertain yourself or have fun?
I love throwing parties. I’m very social. And to relax, I love a good movie. All the better if it has Warren Beattie in it.
What is your greatest personal failing, in your view?
I can be unforgiving.
What keeps you awake at night?
Losing the people I love.
A dramatic and inspiring novel based on the true story of the Jane Collective and the brave women who fought 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 women’s health organization composed entirely of women helping women, empowering them to live lives free from the expectations of society 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—which 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 is forced to 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, when television, movies, and commercials told women they’d “come a long way, baby,” Veronica, Margaret, and Patty must make choices that will change the course of their lives forever.
Women's Fiction Historical [Berkley, On Sale: September 19, 2023, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9780593102213 / eISBN: 9780593102237]
Kerri Maher is also the author of This Is Not A Writing Manual: Notes for the Young Writer in the Real World under the name Kerri Majors. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and founded YARN, an award-winning literary journal of short-form YA writing. For many years a professor of writing, she now writes full time and lives with her daughter in Massachusetts where apple picking and long walks in the woods are especially fine.
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