Midwives A Novel (Oprah's Book Club)

On an icy winter night in 1981, in an isolated house in rural Vermont, seasoned midwife Sibyl Danforth takes desperate measures to save a baby's life, performing an emergency cesarean section on the mother who she believes has died from a stroke. The event quickly transforms into a crisis when Sibyl's assistant charges that the patient was not dead and that Sibyl may have inadvertently caused her death. The novel, recounted by Sibyl's precocious fourteen-year-old daughter, Connie, then becomes a compelling courtroom drama. Sibyl finds herself on trial for involuntary manslaughter, facing the antagonism of the law and traditional doctors as the case devolves into a fierce public debate over the ethics of home birth, alternative medicine, and human responsibility.

Store Availability