September 16, 2024
TORN: A Novel
Mary Flinn
Fiction Worx (2024)
ISBN: 978-0-9977696-1-6
New Novel Takes On Texas Anti-Abortion Law
Award-winning author Mary Flinn is known for writing complicated and nuanced novels, often with a romantic twist. In her newest novel, TORN, she proves a novel can get to the heart of a matter in ways simple logic may not by tackling the story of a teenage Indigenous girl with a difficult pregnancy who is in foster care and is denied the right to choose to abort her child by the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and Texas’s harsh abortion laws.
Whatever side of the abortion issue you are on, TORN will give you much to think about, but while it is issue-driven, more importantly, it is character-driven. We are introduced to a group of characters so real that you will feel you know them, you will want to know what happens to them after the novel ends, and you will miss them for days after you put down the book. Flinn achieves this by not offering easy answers to the abortion debate or black-and-white situations for her characters. In fact, the title reflects the difficulties, as clarified by the novel’s dedication: “To all who are torn about a woman’s right to choose. You are not alone.”
The novel opens with Merilee, an almost-eighteen-year-old high school senior, running from chemistry class to the bathroom to deal with morning sickness. Soon everyone in the school knows Merilee is pregnant by her chemistry lab partner and boyfriend, Micah. Merilee’s complications ensue because both her parents have died and she is in the foster care system. Her foster parents and Micah’s parents don’t believe in abortion so they want her to have the baby and give it up for adoption. Merilee agrees to this, but she has an extremely difficult pregnancy, including suffering from HG (hyperemesis gravidarum), which causes severe nausea and vomiting.
Having to stay home because of her illness, Merilee is assigned a homebound teacher, Dani, who soon becomes her confidant. Besides teaching, Dani finds herself holding Merilee’s hair as Merilee vomits. In time, Merilee confesses to her that she wants the pregnancy to end. But because she lives in Texas, she cannot have an abortion. Dani decides Merilee should have the right to choose what becomes of her child and her own body, so she makes secret arrangements for Merilee to travel to North Carolina to have an abortion.
Enter Theo, a former professional baseball player and co-owner of a bar, who agrees to drive Merilee to North Carolina to have an abortion. Theo feels called upon to help Merilee because he recently lost his wife, Liv. Liv, a friend of Dani’s, was also Merilee’s biology teacher, and Theo remembers how highly Liv thought of Merilee. More personally, Liv died after having two miscarriages and then trying to carry a third child to term, only to have severe complications. When her life became endangered, the doctor was too afraid to perform an abortion to save the mother and it was too late for Theo to drive her to Kansas where abortion is legal. Theo does not want to see Merilee risk her life so he comes to her rescue.
What follows is an odyssey across state lines to find a solution for Merilee, but this will be no easy journey. Not only is Merilee concerned about vomiting in Theo’s truck, but she has mixed feelings about Micah, who basically has dumped her now and may be in a relationship with a girl she thought was her friend. Worse, at a restaurant in Tuscaloosa, Merilee and Theo bump into a former acquaintance of Theo’s who is now a detective and quickly realizes Theo must be helping Merilee to have an abortion. The law allows bounty hunters to report abortion attempts. If he reports Theo to the police, Theo could be faced with legal problems, as could Merilee, and Dani if it’s found out she helped them.
A large cast of supporting characters are also involved, including Liv’s parents, who live in North Carolina and plan to help Theo and Merilee. Merilee’s foster parents do not know where Merilee has gone. Micah is left at home with his own family issues to sort out. And after things in North Carolina do not go as planned, Merilee and Theo return to Texas with a lot of explaining to do, and a lot of angry backlash and misunderstandings to deal with from a host of people.
TORN will continually surprise you. As Theo thinks at one point while they are driving, “There was so much to digest about Merilee Stillwater, whose life changed drastically day by day. Theo couldn’t fathom what it would have been like trying to keep up with her over the past three years.” Merilee has hopes and dreams for her future and she also has a lot of baggage from her past due to her parents’ untimely deaths and her time spent in the foster care system. So many people have come into her life, some to love and help her, some who try to love her but are misguided, and some who simply want to throw her under the bus. Issues of right and wrong, sex and love, prejudice and forgiveness all rise to the surface and seek resolution before the novel is over.
I can assure you that by the time you finish reading TORN, you will have opened your eyes to both sides of the abortion argument, you will grow to accept there is no black and white, and you will wish everyone who finds themselves with an unwanted pregnancy could have the kind of support Merilee finds.
Get ready for laughs, tears, and that cathartic feeling that only the best novelists can provide. After you read TORN, you will not feel torn about wanting to read everything else Mary Flinn has written.
For more information about Mary Flinn and TORN, visit www.TheOneNovel.com.
— Tyler R. Tichelaar, PhD and award-winning author of Narrow Lives and Odin’s Eye: A Marquette Time Travel Novel
