<![CDATA[Midwives]]>

false <![CDATA[Midwives]]>

5166

Oprah Book Club® Selection, October 1998: On a violent, stormy winter night, a home birth goes disastrously wrong. The phone lines are down, the roads slick with ice. The midwife, unable to get her patient to a hospital, works frantically to save both mother and child while her inexperienced assistant and the woman's terrified husband look on. The mother dies but the baby is saved thanks to an emergency C-section. And then the nightmare begins: the assistant suggests that maybe the woman wasn't really dead when the midwife operated: <blockquote> Did she perform at least eight or nine cycles as my mother said, or four or five as Asa recalled? That is the sort of detail that was disputable. But at some point within minutes of what my mother believed had been a stroke, after my mother concluded the cardiopulmonary resuscitation had failed to generate a pulse or a breath, she screamed for Asa and Anne to find her the sharpest knife in the house. </blockquote> In Midwives, Chris Bohjalian chronicles the events leading up to the trial of Sibyl Danforth, a respected midwife in the small Vermont town of Reddington, on charges of manslaughter. It quickly becomes evident, however, that Sibyl is not the only one on trial--the prosecuting attorney and the state's medical community are all anxious to use this tragedy as ammunition against midwifery in general; this particular midwife, after all, an ex-hippie who still evokes the best of the flower-power generation, is something of an anachronism in 1981. Through it all, Sibyl, her husband, Rand, and their teenage daughter, Connie, attempt to keep their family intact, but the stress of the trial--and Sibyl's growing closeness to her lawyer--puts pressure on both marriage and family. Bohjalian takes readers through the intricacies of childbirth and the law, and by the end of Sibyl Danforth's trial, it's difficult to decide which was more harrowing--the tragic delivery or its legal aftermath. Narrated by a now adult Connie, Midwives moves back and forth in time, fitting vital pieces of information about what happened that night like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle into its complicated plot. As Connie looks back on her mother's trial, she is still trying to understand what happened--not on the night of the disaster--but in the months and years that followed. --Margaret Prior

3221872

1998

Midwives

total:11657|5:2390|4:5132|3:3363|2:634|1:138|

11657

43973

14260

1125

3 14 false false Mon Apr 14 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Feb 27 09:25:30 -0800 2008 Thu Apr 17 09:39:12 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 3 false false Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Fri Jan 04 12:35:58 -0800 2008 Fri Jan 04 12:35:58 -0800 2008
I guess depending on how you fee...more...]]> 4 4 false false Mon Jul 16 20:33:18 -0700 2007 Sat Aug 11 07:40:06 -0700 2007 more...]]> 3 3 false false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Mon Sep 24 06:12:12 -0700 2007 Wed Oct 17 06:06:55 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 2 true false Tue Feb 26 09:37:18 -0800 2008 Fri Feb 22 05:33:14 -0800 2008 Tue Feb 26 09:36:16 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Thu Feb 26 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Fri Feb 13 12:43:16 -0800 2009 Thu Feb 26 11:14:59 -0800 2009 I really enjoyed the organization, with the journal entries, and the tone associated with the author's reflections (kind of "if only..."). It made the whole book fee...more...]]> 4 11 false false Mon Jun 29 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Jun 12 14:44:53 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 01 20:17:14 -0700 2009 Midwives, Chris Bohjalian’s fifth novel, on my to-read list for quite a while, but I resisted reading it until now because of some personal baggage: my only son was born, perfectly healthy, in a hospital; but the labour was prolonged, resulting in life-threatening complications that bro...more...]]> 4 1 false false Sun Jul 20 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Jul 20 21:02:38 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 22 18:55:31 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 1 false false Wed Jul 16 15:44:36 -0700 2008 Wed Jan 07 06:51:20 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false false Sun May 25 16:38:18 -0700 2008 Mon May 19 14:28:31 -0700 2008 Sun May 25 16:38:18 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 1 false true Mon May 19 09:31:04 -0700 2008 Fri May 16 08:39:06 -0700 2008 Mon May 19 09:31:04 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 1 false false Sat Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Feb 25 18:03:08 -0800 2008 Wed Mar 05 22:35:54 -0800 2008
1. I am pregnant! What was I thinking reading a book about a tragic home delivery 4 months ...more...]]> 5 1 false false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sat Oct 06 12:04:08 -0700 2007 Sat Oct 06 12:04:47 -0700 2007 more...]]> 3 1 false false Sun Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue Jul 31 08:30:20 -0700 2007 Wed Aug 01 09:14:04 -0700 2007
Yes. I did read an Oprah's Book Club book. And it was pretty good.

This book is set in the early '80s and it's about the murder trial of a midwife named Sybil ... as told from the poi...more...]]> 2 1 false false Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2001 Tue Jun 10 10:30:00 -0700 2008 Tue Jun 10 10:37:01 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 1 false false Sat Jun 14 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon May 05 18:28:28 -0700 2008 Wed Jun 25 21:11:37 -0700 2008
First of all, it really does a great job of explaining why some women choose to have their babies at home, why it is safe, why we should have that choice. I feel passionately about my own homebirth experience. It is not, for the most part, dangerous or an...more...]]> 4 1 false false Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Wed Oct 10 01:50:48 -0700 2007 Sun Oct 28 20:24:34 -0700 2007
I have a bad habit of reading the end of a book and then determining if I'm going to see it all the way through. I held off on doing th...more...]]> 4 1 false false Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sun Jul 08 10:30:34 -0700 2007 Sun Jul 08 10:41:28 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 2 false false Sun Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2003 Mon Aug 13 14:43:46 -0700 2007 Mon Aug 13 16:08:00 -0700 2007 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sun Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 17 12:49:37 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 17 13:00:02 -0800 2009 ...more...]]>