Pamela Redmond’s new novel, The Possibility of You, follows one family through three generations of mothers—each of whom experiences an unexpected pregnancy. In this, her 18th book, Redmond (who writes as Pamela Redmond Satran for New Jersey Monthly’s sister publication, Park Place) moves deftly from Bridget, a 1916 Irish immigrant who is a servant for a wealthy Manhattan socialite; to 19-year-old Billie, an orphan whose interracial relationship raises eyebrows in 1977; to Cait, a present-day, world-traveling journalist who, adopted as a child, is never quite at home anywhere.
Redmond’s predominant theme of motherhood is subtly underpinned by a collage of subtexts—abortion, adoption, women’s rights, race, class, sexuality and identity—that add complexity to the story. “I imagine readers thinking and talking about the question of what makes someone a mother. Is it blood, love, or the time and energy of raising a child?” asks Redmond. “Because you see several characters wrestling with these issues at different points in history, I hope readers will also feel enlightened by how the times inform the characters’ choices.”
Redmond continues: “The most challenging aspect of writing the novel was interweaving the contemporary and historic stories. To be really compelling, what happened in the past needed to make a difference to what happened in the present. It needed to be interesting on a level beyond, ‘And then what did you do, Grandma?’”
Redmond, a Montclair resident, uses historical figures and events, such as the polio epidemic of 1916, and cameos by activist and Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger and singer Patti Smith, to connect her characters to the periods in which they live.