What a Young Wife Ought to Know, Paperback

It's Ottawa in the 1920s, before birth control is legalized. Sophie, a young working-class girl, falls madly in love with her sister's suitor, and eventually marries, a stablehand named Jonny. After two difficult childbirths, doctors tell Sophie she shouldn't have any more children, but don't tell her how to prevent it. When Sophie inevitably becomes pregnant again, she faces a grim dilemma.

In an unflinching look at love, sex, and fertility, and inspired by real stories of mothers during the Canadian birth-control movement of the early-20th century, one of Canada's most celebrated playwrights vividly recreates a couple's struggles with reproduction.

Hannah Moscovitch is an acclaimed playwright, librettist, and TV writer. Her work for the stage includes East of Berlin, This is War, Little One, The Russian Play, Bunny, Infinity, and her operas with Lembit Beecher, I have no stories to tell youand Sky on Swings. She's been widely produced in Canada, as well as in the United States, Britain, Europe, Australia, and Japan. Hannah's been honoured with numerous awards, including multiple Dora Mavor Moore Awards, Fringe First and Herald Angel Awards at the Edinburgh Fringe, the Trillium Book Award, and the prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize administered by Yale. She's been a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and twice for the Siminovitch Prize. This past spring, Hannah was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical after Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story.