Midwives: A Novel [Paperback]

Chris Bohjalian (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1997

A talented midwife is arrested for murder when she saves a baby by performing a Caesarean section once she believes the mother has died--only to have her assistant insist later that the woman was still very much alive. Told in the mesmerizing voice of the midwife's daughter, Midwives depicts the aftermath of the tragedy.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Midwives, Chris Bohjalian's fifth novel, is the story of two women: Sibyl Danforth, a lay midwife in rural Vermont, and her daughter, Connie. The nexus of this cautionary tale is an emergency Caesarean section Sibyl performs during a home birth that goes disastrously wrong. Believing the mother is already dead from a stroke, Sibyl operates and later finds herself on trial for killing the woman. The compelling story of her trial and its aftermath comes to us from Connie, who believes "this is my story, too." In fact, Connie's reaction to her mother's ordeal is to go to medical school and become an obstetrician. The book raises provocative issues about medical ethics and the limits of risk.

From Library Journal

In this new tale from the author of the acclaimed Water Witches (LJ 2/1/95), a New England midwife is accused of murder. Film rights were bought by Columbia-Tristar Pictures.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: Harmony; 1st edition (April 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0517703963
• ISBN-13: 978-0517703960
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (565 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,126,872 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Chris Bohjalian is the author of fourteen books, including the New York Times bestsellers, The Night Strangers, Secrets of Eden, Skeletons at the Feast, The Double Bind, Before You Know Kindness, The Law of Similars, and Midwives.

His new novel, The Night Strangers, is a ghost story inspired by a door in his basement and Sully Sullenberger's successful ditching of an Airbus in the Hudson River.

Secrets of Eden, his 2010 novel, will air as a Lifetime Television movie on January 28, 2012. It stars John Stamos and Anna Gunn.

Chris won the New England Book Award in 2002, and his novel, Midwives, was a number one New York Times bestseller, a selection of Oprah's Book Club, a Publishers Weekly "Best Book," and a New England Booksellers Association Discovery pick. His work has been translated into over 25 languages and twice before become movies ("Midwives" and "Past the Bleachers"). You can see some of the international covers on this web site.

He has written for a wide variety of magazines, including Cosmopolitan, Reader's Digest, and the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, and has been a Sunday columnist for Gannett's Burlington Free Press since 1992. Chris graduated from Amherst College, and lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter.

You can learn more about him here on the Q and A, as well as on Facebook . And, if you like, follow him on twitter as well.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

102 of 104 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A compelling story..., March 31, 2002

By 

Dianna Johnston "Compulsive Reader" (Joplin, MO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Midwives (Oprah's Book Club) (Paperback)

Midwives is a wonderfully written and powerfully told story of a family's life in small-town Vermont and the events that changed it forever. Gripping and real, Chris Bohjalian has woven together a murder mystery that will have readers guessing until the very end.

Sybil Danforth, midwife and mother of the story's narrator, 14-year-old Connie, has a thriving practice and normal family life. Then the unthinkable happens: on a cold winter night in the middle of coaching Charlotte Bedford through her lengthy and strenuous labor, tragedy strikes -- Charlotte dies while trying to give birth to her son. With phone lines heaving with ice and roads too treacherous to drive upon, Sybil is forced into a decision -- to save the unborn baby via a homemade Caeserean or let him die along with his mother.

As the events of that evening unfold, readers are privy to shocking information: the Caesarean Sybil is forced to perform may have been done on a living woman. Soon a courtroom battle ensues, pitting the medical community against midwifery, and readers will be left wondering after each page is turned what really happened on that cold, dark night.

Chris Bohjalian is a very talented writer who has obviously spent a lot of research on this novel. Telling this story in a female voice as accurately as he did makes Midwives all the more compelling and authentic. His writing style was very easy to understand even though it jumps back and forth between past and present. A hearty mystery with a riveting conclusion. I will be reading more by this author.

55 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Midwives - a story for our times., April 5, 2000

By 

Dave Kinnear "Executive Leader Coach" (Lake Forest, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Midwives (Oprah's Book Club) (Paperback)

This is a book I couldn't put down. It is amazing how Mr. Bohjalian was able to put into writing the feelings of women during childbirth. Certainly it is difficult enough to express those feelings, but to do so as a man shows an incredible amount of compassion and understanding. A lesson to us all, I'm sure. This is a tightly written novel concerning a normally safe home birth gone terribly wrong, and how it affects the lives of all those involved. It twists and turns and leads the reader to wrong assumptions over and over again. At the same time it manages to bring forth the mystery and wonder of life, and especially the moment of birth. The novel is written from the point of view of the Midwife's daughter, who is, at the time of the writing, a doctor, specifically an OB/GYN. Armed with first hand knowledge as well as her mother's copious notes, Constance spins the story of her mother's passion for midwifery, devotion to her trade, and tragic loss of that love after the death of one of her mothers. The trial scenes are wonderfully exciting and maddening at the same time. But more important is the story of love and support in the Danforth family, though not without it's stress and misunderstandings. And Constance tells her own story of growing up and through the tragedy of the public trial, her mother's too close relationship with her lawyer, and her father's struggle to understand and support his wife. All in all, a wonderful book that surprised me a great deal. Thanks to my wife and our book club for getting me to read it.

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Unique Storyliine, February 21, 2000

By 

scabb - See all my reviews

This review is from: Midwives (Oprah's Book Club) (Paperback)

While reading 'Midwives: A Novel' I was captivated and yet appalled by the graphic portrayal of a midwife caught within a horrific tragedy. As both a 'survivor' of an unexpected c-section performed in a rural area hospital,and consequently, mother of an intelligent and beautiful sixteen-year-old young woman, I remain awed by Mr. Bohjalian talents. The uncanny irony of a man's ability to craft a story from a young girl's perspective with such accuracy was startling. I was washing clothes while reading the novel, inevitably causing lengthy pauses, and found myself reflecting on my own values, beliefs, and morals. At one particularly compelling twist, I stopped the incessant reading to curiously inquire of my husband (a non-reader), after explaining the plot and subplots of the novel, to genuinely give his idea of a moral and ethical response if he were ever confronted with such a dire circumstance. Although emotionally torn between the mind bending realism of Sybil Danforth and her friend, the innocent but fateful Charlotte Buford Bedford, I will always be endeared to the true heroine, Ms. Connie Danforth, for her stoic goodness. A novel that I will pass, effortlessly, to all my reading friends.