Threadbare

Threadbare recounts the story of Tillie, an innocent but tenacious young girl who chooses to marry Abe, a lonely widower, rather than follow her farming community north as urban development transforms rural Harlem. Convinced Abe will help her attend high school on the Lower East Side, Tillie faces a rude awakening amidst the filth and disease of the tenements. Through the following decades, she turns her energy and intelligence to partnering with Abe as he builds a thriving button business while she and her neighbor Sadie launch a unique garment company. Pushing back against anti-Semitic Victorian values dominating the time, Tillie acquires wealth only to have her life upended by a devastating, unforeseen challenge.

Threadbare is a prequel and can be read before or after the first book in the series, In the Hands of Women.

A terrifying diagnosis, a genetic defect, and a lifelong fascination with the history of medicine led Jane Rubin to put pen to paper. After an ovarian cancer diagnosis in 2009, Jane, then a healthcare executive, poured her energy into raising research dollars for ovarian cancer and learning more about her familial roots. Her research led her to her great-grandmother, Mathilda (Tillie), who arrived in New York City in 1866, at sixteen married a man twelve years her senior, and later died of 'a woman's disease.' Then the trail ran cold. Jane was left imagining Tillie's life, her fight with terminal disease, and circumstances surrounding her death. With limited facts, she was determined to give Mathilda an exciting fictional life of her own.Her research of the history of New York City, its ultra-conservative reproductive laws, and the state of medicine during that era has culminated in a suspenseful, fast-paced, two-book historical series. Her engaging characters are confronted with the shifting role of midwives, dangers of pregnancy, the infamous Blackwell's Workhouse, and the perilous road to financial success. Jane's other publications include an essay memoir, Almost a Princess, My Life as a Two-Time Cancer Survivor (2009 Next Generation Indie Book Finalist), and multiple articles in the Coping with Cancer periodical. She writes a monthly blog, The Space Between, reflecting on her post- health care career and writing journey. It is available through her website, JaneLoebRubin.com.Jane lives with her husband, David an attorney, in Northern New Jersey. Between them, they have five adult children and seven precious grandchildren.