Looking for Jane

Content Warning: This section discusses death by suicide, miscarriage, and abortion.

Angela Creighton is one of the novel’s point-of-view characters and protagonists. Angela’s story is the most modern, taking place in 2017. Married to a woman, Tina, and wanting to have a baby, Angela grapples with the stress of fertility treatments and the grief of miscarriage before successfully becoming pregnant with twins at the end of the novel. Her access to fertility treatments and her control over her own reproduction contrast with the disenfranchisement of Maggie and Evelyn in the 1960s; Angela must cope with the pain of pregnancy loss but not the turmoil of being forcibly separated from her child as Maggie was.

As she herself was adopted, Angela relates to Nancy’s experience with her adoptive parents. Angela serves as a proxy for the reader as she hunts down clues to solve the mystery of the letter and Nancy’s and Evelyn’s identities. Angela’s narrative arc is a classic quest plotline in which she overcomes many barriers to find Nancy and Evelyn and bring them together. Angela values honesty and open conversation. The author uses many tools of characterization, like