Midwives

It is 1981, and Sibyl Danforth has spent fifteen years working as a committed midwife in the little Vermont town of Reddington. Nevertheless, on a perilous winter's eve, in a home cut off by ice roads and malfunctioning phone lines, Sibyl resorts to drastic means to save the life of a newborn. Its mother seemed to have passed away during childbirth, so she performs an emergency Caesarean section on her. But what if the patient wasn't already dead and Sibyl had accidentally murdered her, as Sibyl's aide subsequently claims?

The trial that follows has all the makings of a witch hunt, according to Connie, Sibyl's astute fourteen-year-old daughter. However, everyone involved is acting with the best of intentions, and the defendant is starting to seem guilty. Midwives captivates, moves, and transfixes us in a way that only the greatest books can as Sibyl Danforth battles the opposition of the law, the animosity of conventional physicians, and the accusations of her own conscience.