Laney Katz Becker Launches Powerful and Timely Novel, IN THE FAMILY WAY!

Join award-winning author, writer, and former literary agent for the Columbus launch of , a timely and poignant novel that captures the experiences of women on the cusp of liberation. Laney will be in conversation with award-winning author and Denison University creative writing professor, .

The pre-purchase of In the Family Way while registering waives the $5 registration fee.

DENISON UNIVERSITY is Gramercy’s Community Partner for this program.

In 1965 America, women can’t have their own bank accounts, credit cards, or sign their own leases; divorce is scandalous and difficult; and abortion is illegal.

Every week, a group of suburban housewives meet for their Tuesday canasta game. As cards are drawn and discarded, the women share advice and confidences. When prim and proper Lily Berg, a doctor’s wife, discovers she’s pregnant with their second child, she follows her friend Becca’s suggestion and takes in Betsy, a pregnant teen from the local home for unwed mothers. Betsy, who’s never met anyone Jewish before, is to live with the Bergs for six months, help with babysitting and housekeeping, have her own baby, and agree never to contact the family again.

But things quickly get complicated. Lily, who’s opened her home to the teenager, never planned on opening her heart, yet that’s exactly what happens. Meanwhile, Becca is pregnant with her fourth and comes up with a scheme to get a legal, therapeutic abortion, and Lily’s sister, Rose, discovers the man she married isn’t who he purported to be, and turns to Lily and her husband for help.

Moving and atmospheric, full of history and heart, In the Family Way is a timely novel that captures the experiences of women on the cusp of liberation as they struggle with their own complex feelings about being wives, mothers, and women with their own dreams and ambitions.

Laney Katz Becker is an award-winning author, writer, and a former literary agent. Her books include the debut novel, Dear Stranger, Dearest Friend, and the nonfiction anthology, Three Times Chai, a collection of rabbis’ favorite stories. When she’s not writing, Laney enjoys drawing, sewing, reading, long walks, playing tennis, and canasta. She is a graduate of Northwestern University, raised her two children in Westchester County, New York, and currently lives on the east coast of Florida with her husband and their Havanese.

Margot Singer is the award-winning author of a forthcoming collection of personal essays, Secret Agent Man (Barrow Street, June 2025); a novel, Underground Fugue (Melville House, 2017); and a linked short-story collection, The Pale of Settlement (University of Georgia Press, 2007). She is also the co-author, with Nicole Walker, of Bending Genre: Essays on Creative Nonfiction (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013; 2nd ed., 2023). She is the recipient of the Flannery O’Connor Award, the Edward Lewis Wallant Award, the Reform Judaism Prize, the Glasgow Prize, the James Jones First Novel Fellowship, as well as grants from the NEA and the Ohio Arts Council. A professor of creative writing at Denison University, she lives with her family in Granville, Ohio.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Gramercy Books, 2424 East Main Street, Columbus, United States