In The Midwife of Hope River, Patricia Harman gives readers the story of fictional, Depression-er midwife Patience Murphy, who has arrived in the hills and hollers of West Virginia shortly before the market crashes and the mines begin to close. Quietly and steadily, Patience delivers babies across the hardscrabble region, where the ravages of man and mother nature are never far. (Jenny Lee has nothing on Patience Murphy...or the actual women who performed the acts Harman has ascribed to her fictional protagonist!)
Patience is the star of the book, along with her apprentice Bitsy and the local veterinarian, Daniel Hester, but Harman does a masterful job of incorporating the history of the miners' struggles, such that part of Midwife read like pages from The Devil Is Here in These Hills. The books reads easily, and quickly, with each chapter essentially the story of one more birth, though the entire story is woven together into a delightful whole.
Aspects of it reminded me of The Truth According to Us, with its tales of Depression-era life in tiny towns tucked into the mountains. Between the two, I found The Midwife of Hope River to be the richer read, and I'm looking forward to reading the sequel, Once a Midwife.
Five stars.
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