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Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Discuss | Reviews | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
Sibyl faces the antagonism of the law, the hostility of traditional doctors, and the accusations of her own conscience. Midwives engages, moves, and transfixes us as only the very best novels ever do.
On an icy winter night in an isolated house in rural Vermont, a seasoned midwife named Sibyl Danforth takes desperate measures to save a baby's life. She performs an emergency cesarean section on a mother she believes has died of a stroke. But what if Sibyl's patient wasn't dead--and Sibyl inadvertently killed her?
As Sibyl faces the antagonism of the law, the hostility of traditional doctors, and the accusations of her own conscience, Midwives engages, moves, and transfixes us as only the very best novels ever do.
Throughout the long summer before my mother's trial began, and then during those crisp days in the fall when her life was paraded publicly before the county--her character lynched, her wisdom impugned--I overheard much more than my parents realized, and I understood more than they would have liked.
Through the register in the floor of my bedroom I could listen to the discussions my parents would have with my mother's attorney in the den late at night, after the adults had assumed I'd been sleeping for hours. If the three of them happened to be in the suite off the kitchen my mother used as her office and examining room, perhaps searching for an old document in her records or a patient's prenatal history, I would lie on the bathroom floor above them and listen as their words traveled up to me through the holes that had been cut for the water pipes to the sink. And while I never went so far as to lift the receiver of an upstairs telephone when I heard my mother speaking on the kitchen...
Midwives: Reading Guide & Q&A
Reading Guide
The questions, discussion topics and suggestions for further reading that follow are designed to enhance your group's reading of Chris Bohjalian's Midwives. We hope they will give you a number of new angles from which to consider this enthralling and provocative novel, a gripping combination of courtroom thriller, domestic drama, and novel of ideas that adds up to a lyrical and suspenseful work of art.
On an icy winter night of 1981 in the rustic community of Reddington, Vermont, seasoned midwife Sibyl Danforth is forced to make a life-or-death decision that will change her world forever. Trapped by the weather in an isolated farmhouse, cut off from the hospital or even the emergency ...
BookBrowsers Ask Author Chris Bohjalian
Thank YOU, MaryJane. Look for my next novel, THE AMATEUR, in August 2026. It's my first courtroom drama since MIDWIVES.
-Chris_B
If you’ve read other books by this author, how do they compare to this one? How, in your opinion, does his writing bring to life the intersection of chance and choice?
The first book of his that I read was Midwives, years ago, which was one Oprah's first book picks. I really enjoyed this new author and so for a while I read all his books. I didn't enjoy any of his contemporary thrillers so stopped reading his books. I'm glad I was selected to read and review th...
-Carol_Dirks
What audience would you recommend The Frozen River to? Is there another book or author you feel has a similar theme or style?
I really like reading about midfwifery. I remember really liking the book Midwives: A Novel, by Chris Bohjalian. I also loved Call the Midwife on PBS and have watched all the seasons. I think I enjoy reading birth stories is because every woman's experience is different and a capable midwife can ...
-Lynn_R
If you liked Midwives, try these:
by Sam Thomas
Published 2013
In the tradition of Arianna Franklin and C. J. Sansom comes Samuel Thomas's remarkable debut, The Midwife's Tale
by Louise Erdrich
Published 2013
An exquisitely told story of a boy on the cusp of manhood who seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends and forever transforms his family.
Songs of Summer
by Jane L. Rosen
A young woman crashes a Fire Island wedding to find her birth mother—and gets more than she bargained for.
Erased
by Anna Malaika Tubbs
In Erased, Anna Malaika Tubbs recovers all that American patriarchy has tried to destroy.
Awake in the Floating City
by Susanna Kwan
A debut novel about an artist and a 130-year-old woman bound by love and memory in a future, flooded San Francisco.
The Original Daughter
by Jemimah Wei
A dazzling debut by Jemimah Wei about ambition, sisterhood, and family bonds in turn-of-the-millennium Singapore.
There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are either well written or badly written. That is all.
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