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Overview
“I come from a long line of midwives,” narrates Elizabeth Whitely. “I was expected to follow Mama, follow Granny, follow Great-granny. In the end, I didn’t disappoint them.Or perhaps I did. After all, there were no more midwives after me.”For generations, the women in Elizabeth’s family have brought life to Kettle Valley, West Virginia, heeding a destiny to tend its women with herbals, experience, and wisdom. But Elizabeth, who has comforted so many, has lost her heart to the one man who cannot reciprocate, even when she moves into his home to share his bed and raise his child.
Then Lauren Denniker, Elizabeth’s adopted daughter, begins to display a miraculous gift--just as Elizabeth learns that she herself is unable to have a child. How Elizabeth comes to free herself from a loveless relationship, grapple with Lauren’s astonishing abilities, and come to terms with her own emptiness is the compelling heart of this remarkable tale. Incorporating the spirited mountain mythology of prewar Appalachia, Gretchen Laskas has crafted a story as true to our time as its own, and a cast of characters as poignant as they are entirely original.
From the Hardcover edition.
Synopsis
“I come from a long line of midwives,” narrates Elizabeth Whitely. “I was expected to follow Mama, follow Granny, follow Great-granny. In the end, I didn’t disappoint them.
Or perhaps I did. After all, there were no more midwives after me.”For generations, the women in Elizabeth’s family have brought life to Kettle Valley, West Virginia, heeding a destiny to tend its women with herbals, experience, and wisdom. But Elizabeth, who has comforted so many, has lost her heart to the one man who cannot reciprocate, even when she moves into his home to share his bed and raise his child.
Then Lauren Denniker, Elizabeth’s adopted daughter, begins to display a miraculous gift—just as Elizabeth learns that she herself is unable to have a child. How Elizabeth comes to free herself from a loveless relationship, grapple with Lauren’s astonishing abilities, and come to terms with her own emptiness is the compelling heart of this remarkable tale. Incorporating the spirited mountain mythology of prewar Appalachia, Gretchen Laskas has crafted a story as true to our time as its own, and a cast of characters as poignant as they are entirely original.
Raleigh News Observer
Laskas keeps up a lively pace, moving from one episode to another with the ease of a seasoned storyteller.
Editorials
Bloomsbury Review
[An] endearing debut…[written] with clarity and a delightful storytelling ease.Book Street USA
Spare and affecting.Cleveland Plain Dealer
Laskas does a masterful job of capturing both a time and a place….She is a writer to watch.First For Women Magazine
A warm, wonderful novel.January Magazine
The book is like a literary time machine, transporting the reader to another world, another era with just the turn of a page.Kirkus Reviews
Evocative storytelling!Library Journal
Set in pre-World War 1 West Virginia, this novel flows along like the tributaries that feed the book's Appalachian foothills, as narrator Elizabeth Whitely traces the arc of four generations of midwives in her family, she being the last of the line. Poverty, lack of clean water, unemployment, and an influenza epidemic, and severe weather also figure in the often melancholy tale. Laskas has injected many period details into her first book and alot of verve into her characters to make them come alive. Elizabeth doesn't leave much to the imagination as she details the sights, sounds, smells, and touch of delivering a baby. Growing out of a storytelling tradition, this is more than just a book about babies and midwives. It is also about complex relationships between mothers and daughters, grandmothers and granddaughters, friends and lovers and all about the inheritance of and passing on of family traditions. Laskas deftly incorporates other threads into the book, including an examination of faith healing, gossip, and outsider status in a tight-knit community.—Starred Review 3/15/30