Finding Strength in Struggle: A Conversation with Jane Loeb Rubin
I’m fascinated by women who reinvent themselves. That’s why I was so excited to interview award-winning author Jane Loeb Rubin, who began her fiction-writing journey following battles with ovarian and breast cancer and a 30-plus-year career in healthcare. The main characters in Rubin’s historical novels display that same indomitable spirit.
Rubin’s newest book, Threadbare, is the prequel to her first book, In The Hands of Women. It tells the story of Tillie, a 19th-century Jewish immigrant who confronts religious, gender, immigrant, and healthcare discrimination as she builds a business in Manhattan. Highlighting the earliest days of the suffragettes’ push for equality, Threadbare is a fictionalized version of Rubin’s great-grandmother’s life. The “real” Tillie immigrated to New York City in the late 1800s and later died of a “woman’s disease.” Rubin dedicates most of the profits from her books to the Mathilda Fund, which benefits the Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance and was named to honor her great-grandmother.
This conversation has been edited for content and clarity.
Mally Becker: Tell everyone about your newest award-winning historical novel, Threadbare. I’m thrilled to have a chance to interview you after reading it.
Jane Loeb Rubin: Threadbare tells the story of Mathilda, a Jewish girl who grew up on a family farm in Harlem in the late 1800s. A community of European Jewish farmers who’d settled there were forced out to make way for the expansion of urban development in Manhattan north of Central Park. Mathilda—or Tillie, as she was known—makes the tough choice to leave her family, marry a lonely widower, Abe, and remain in New York City to begin a new and exciting life. The book tracks her journey from living on one of those vanishing farms to relocating to the tenements of the Lower East Side. It chronicles family tragedies and business success with her husband and her best friend as they launch an innovative dress kit business—providing women with dress kits that include a pattern, fabric, and notions—which gets upended by a series of unforeseen events.
MB: Your passion for this project shines through your narrative. Tell us more about your personal connection.
JR: I initially wrote Threadbare as a tribute to my great-grandmother, Mathilda (Tillie). It’s based on the limited facts I could gather. We know that Tillie emigrated from Germany with her parents in 1866, a year after the end of the Civil War, and settled in the northern farms of Harlem while Central Park was being created.
I discovered Tillie while I was struggling with cancer. Through ancestry.com, I researched ancestors who might have passed along the BRCA gene mutation associated with ovarian and breast cancer, and I was able to uncover a few facts about my great-grandmother. She was one year old when her family arrived from Germany and 16 when she married Abe. He was 28. The 1900 census report recorded them living on 115th Street, listing Tillie’s employment as “homemaker” and Abe’s as “woolens.” The rest of the story was lost, so I used a few bits of family folklore to guide my narrative.
While researching and writing Tillie’s story, I became fascinated with the suffragette movement in New York City and the complexities of the larger women’s rights movement of the time. I decided to weave many of those themes into the book.
MB: You had this story in mind for quite a while. What specifically pushed you to open your laptop and start writing?
JR: I discovered my great-grandmother Mathilda’s information 10 years before I began writing Threadbare. After my cancer diagnosis, I raised money for the Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance (OCRA). Each year, I wrote a fundraising letter that shared something new I discovered about Mathilda or my latest treatment. After 10 years passed, I retired from my career as a hospital executive, and since I was still in reasonably good health, I fulfilled a lifelong dream and started writing historical fiction. The first item of business was giving Tillie a story. I’d spent a decade wondering what her life was like and what fighting a terminal disease with 19th-century medicine felt like for her. In writing her story, I wanted to recognize women of that era who, like Tillie, fought a lonely battle against cancer.
MB: What was the most surprising thing you learned about a woman’s place in the world during this era—the so-called Gilded Age—when researching your book?
JR: First, I learned that the suffragette movement was propelled forward not so much by its well-known leaders but by the masses of women who were driven to stretch their personal boundaries. They were the smart girls who wanted to go to school and the mothers who insisted their daughters have more opportunities than they were afforded. I also learned about the clandestine actions some women took to illegally procure birth control or to terminate a pregnancy in order to control their family’s size so they could continue working.
It’s critical to realize that the rights women enjoy today resulted from the collective efforts of those suffragettes, not just from high-profile leaders like Susan B. Anthony. We’re indebted to every woman of every color and ethnic group who pushed for more economic, personal, and professional freedom. And today, we should never think of our contributions to our families or communities as insignificant. It’s only through grassroots movements that we can make changes.
As a career woman with a lifetime of experience, I attempt to share through my characters some of the wisdom I’ve gleaned over the years. We must appreciate how hard-fought women’s rights are and that we stand on the shoulders of generations of ordinary women, who sacrificed so their daughters and granddaughters could have the rights we have today. And we must appreciate the fragile balance. Any of us who have competed in the marketplace realize that the higher we rise, the harder we must push for fair treatment.
For readers who’d like to learn more about the history of the women’s rights movement, I included a bibliography in the back of the book.
MB: I took away from your story that a woman can make family the center of her life while still following her dream. Did I get that right?
JR: Yes, of course, but only if parents and partners are aligned in their values. And the most effective way to impart those values is to practice them. From the beginning of time, children have learned from the models their parents set. As parents, we strive to help our children become their best selves. The first step is demonstrating the behavior while setting a respectful example.
MB: When a reader closes your book, what do you hope they take from it?
JR: I hope people enjoy my story, characters, and the history I crafted. Most of all, I hope they’re cheering for Tilly. Through Threadbare, I tried to inspire my readers to take a closer look at history when shaping their views of current issues. We can avoid repeating past mistakes when we understand the ramifications in a historical context. Reproductive rights, employment equality, and women’s rights continue to be front-burner issues today, even though it’s been 100 years since women fought for the right to vote. The movement illustrates that our voices still have collective power and should be used to protect and advance the rights of women, today and always.