Hello and welcome to Happy to Be Here, the show for recovering perfectionists and the

Perpetually Curious about what to read, eat, watch, think about, and delight in wherever

you might happen to be. I'm your host, Greta Johnson, and I am so excited that you are here.

My guest today is someone you may already know if you are an old school nerd out listener.

Her name is Kate Schatz, and she's a writer and activist who's written a number of books for young people.

She co-wrote Do the Work, an anti-racist activity book with W. Kamau Bell.

She's also the author of Rad American Women and Rad Women Worldwide. Now she is back with her first

adult novel. It's called Where the Girls Were, and it takes place in 1968, and it's about a teenager

named Elizabeth, who goes by Baker. And Baker is doing all the right

things. She's class valedictorian. She writes fancy op-eds for the school paper. She is destined

for an amazing future until she meets a boy and has sex with that boy and gets pregnant.

Of course, this is five years before Roe v. Wade was passed in 1973, so while an abortion is

technically possible, it's very dangerous on a number of levels. And Baker ends up in a home

for wayward girls. This is a place where she can wait out her pregnancy with other girls in the

same condition.

Then, after she gives birth and puts the baby up for adoption, Baker is expected to just return to her life as if nothing happened.

Where the girls were is a novel, but Kate's own mother had two unplanned pregnancies and

was sent away when she was a young woman.

And so this book is

not an account of Kate's mom's story as much as it is a novel about a very real time in United

States history. Let's get into the conversation. Overall, I mean, I feel like it's a book about,

you know, choice and reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy and how

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