13. Midwives

13. Midwives by Chris Bohjalian  (5/24/2011 - 5/30/2011)

Bohjalian crafted a masterpiece in this book, in my opinion.  I could not put it down -- the combination of courtroom drama with the primal acts of both giving life and taking it made for a quick and fascinating read.

The plot is both wonderfully basic and amazingly complex.  The events themselves are relatively straightforward: during a dangerous winter storm, Sibyl, a midwife, performs an emergency C-section on a patient she believes has died during the trials of giving birth.  She is trapped in the patient's home by ice and road conditions, and ultimately saves the baby while the father and her assistant look on in horror. Within days, Sibyl is charged with murdering the mother and the rest of the plot revolves around her trial, intermixed with journal entries that help illuminate the world of home-birth, especially as compared with hospital births and the controversies that try to force mothers to have babies in hospitals instead of at home (if a home birth is what they desire).

The story is told from the point of view of Sibyl's daughter, Connie, which allows for much speculation on the reader's part as Connie is not always privy to everything happening around her and thus neither is the reader.  In some of the courtroom scenes, Connie doesn't know what is really happening -- after all, she is only 14 and her father and grandmother are trying to protect her from potentially seeing her mother convicted of murder.

No details are spared the reader whatsoever.  I am fortunate and my mother works as a labor and delivery nurse, so I've seen several live births and am familiar with what accompanies life's entry into this world.  Not all readers may be as familiar with the situation and so there is some potential for misunderstanding or just generally being grossed out.  However, Bohjalian does a great job of giving the reader enough details to understand what is happening (most of the time, at least).  And the suspension crafted by the end of the book is incredible -- even I was not expecting the ending that was delivered (no pun intended :) ).

The experience of reading this book was highly emotional for me, possibly because I understood it so well. It's difficult to root for a main character that may or may not have murdered her patient, and since I was ultimately allowed to make that decision for myself, based on the ending evidence that the book provides, I was extremely emotionally involved by the end.  In fact, thinking about it now (I am writing quite a long time after finishing the book), I'm still not 100% sure whether I think Sibyl is innocent or guilty.  There are so many factors that play into what happened, and more are introduced as the book continues.  As I mentioned before, the events themselves are pretty basic -- a woman dies while giving birth during a storm, and the midwife, since they cannot make it to a hospital, performs an emergency C-section to save the baby.  But the information that comes out throughout the rest of the book makes even these events so much more complicated -- and all before I as the reader tried to decide between guilty or innocent.

Overall, I would highly recommend this book, especially for women.  The information given about home vs. hospital births is well researched and so this book could potentially help readers understand or even make decisions about their birthing choices.  But even more than that, Midwives is a well written book that makes for a great read (provided you can handle some slightly graphic descriptions).