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Born Far From Home: A Midwife's Search for Meaning
A new Muslim, Shannon Staloch moves to California to live near a community studying traditional Islam and finds herself learning another venerable tradition, midwifery. In this intricately woven memoir, Shannon braids the intimate moments from the birth stories of a diverse cast of women with the reflections of great thinkers from the Islamic and Western traditions—from the spiritual master Imam al-Ghazali to the British obstetrician Grantly Dick Read, from Plato to Malcolm X—as she traces her journey of finding belonging and an enduring path to truth in her new faith. Birth by birth, Shannon arrives closer to understanding her craft and herself, as she aims at a place that transcends identity, buoyed by the belief that dedication to a craft could shape not just the hands of a craftswoman, but also her soul.
- GenresHistory
255 pages, Paperback
Published October 23, 2025
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January 17, 2026
Born Far From Home – Shannon Staloch 🤍
Page-turning, lyrical, and quietly transformative—this is a book in which you do not merely read about pregnancy; you become pregnant alongside it. You become the midwife.
The opening chapter traces Shannon’s journey to Islam during the fraught months following 9/11. We follow her first encounters with wuḍūʾ and prayer, her arrival at Zaytuna College, and her first lecture—“The Rights and Responsibilities of Marriage”—taught by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, to whom I personally owe deep gratitude.
“More than a shade under a tree
On a sunny day in Tennessee
More than I love me,
I love you.”
— Kareem Salama, More Than
Each chapter opens a door toward God and His Attributes. These are not only stories of labor; they are signs (āyāt) written into the very physiology of creation. You learn what a placenta bowl is. You learn about the pushing rope. You learn the truth of contractions:
“I never met a woman who said, ‘I wish I could have one more contraction.’”
This book arrives at a critical moment. Not only is the role of the midwife disappearing, but motherhood itself is increasingly devalued. We live in a time when gender is treated as incidental, family life as optional, and individualism as virtue.
Born Far From Home makes one fall in love with being a woman. It makes one long for motherhood—not as a societal expectation, but as a divine gift. It teaches women about their own bodies, their sacred capacity, and the beauty of relational, covenantal love.
“The secret of their creation—a secret only their Creator could keep.”
This book is important for married women, unmarried women, and women who hope to marry and seeking to get pregnant. It teaches what it means to be created as a woman and why that creation is not accidental. In my eyes, this is an award-winning work—narrative nonfiction told with the richness and intimacy of One Thousand and One Nights.
“Twins,” whispers Marissa as she strokes her daughters’ wet heads, her full lips turned up in a joyous smile.
Born Far From Home is not only a book about birth.
It is a book about remembering who we are.
Page-turning, lyrical, and quietly transformative—this is a book in which you do not merely read about pregnancy; you become pregnant alongside it. You become the midwife.
The opening chapter traces Shannon’s journey to Islam during the fraught months following 9/11. We follow her first encounters with wuḍūʾ and prayer, her arrival at Zaytuna College, and her first lecture—“The Rights and Responsibilities of Marriage”—taught by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, to whom I personally owe deep gratitude.
“More than a shade under a tree
On a sunny day in Tennessee
More than I love me,
I love you.”
— Kareem Salama, More Than
Each chapter opens a door toward God and His Attributes. These are not only stories of labor; they are signs (āyāt) written into the very physiology of creation. You learn what a placenta bowl is. You learn about the pushing rope. You learn the truth of contractions:
“I never met a woman who said, ‘I wish I could have one more contraction.’”
This book arrives at a critical moment. Not only is the role of the midwife disappearing, but motherhood itself is increasingly devalued. We live in a time when gender is treated as incidental, family life as optional, and individualism as virtue.
Born Far From Home makes one fall in love with being a woman. It makes one long for motherhood—not as a societal expectation, but as a divine gift. It teaches women about their own bodies, their sacred capacity, and the beauty of relational, covenantal love.
“The secret of their creation—a secret only their Creator could keep.”
This book is important for married women, unmarried women, and women who hope to marry and seeking to get pregnant. It teaches what it means to be created as a woman and why that creation is not accidental. In my eyes, this is an award-winning work—narrative nonfiction told with the richness and intimacy of One Thousand and One Nights.
“Twins,” whispers Marissa as she strokes her daughters’ wet heads, her full lips turned up in a joyous smile.
Born Far From Home is not only a book about birth.
It is a book about remembering who we are.
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