What I’m Reading: The Last Midwife

If you are a regular blog reader you know that most of the books I enjoy now days come to me in audio form and you also know that I am a Sandra Dallas fan.  She write wonderful historical fiction about strong women.  When I saw that she Dallas had a new book out I contacted the publisher and asked if they might be willing to let me review her latest book and happily they said yes.

The newest book is The Last Midwife: A Novel.  I read this one in hard copy.  Typically I always relax reading something for 10-20 minutes before bedtime but often it’s a pattern or magazine.  Lately it’s been this book.

Of course I always love Dallas’ books for the quilting references…of course I love them for the strong women…of course I love them because I learn a little about life from long ago.  This one was all of those things.

Here’s what Amazon had to say about it, “It is 1880 and Gracy Brookens is the only midwife in a small Colorado mining town where she has delivered hundreds, maybe thousands, of babies in her lifetime. The women of Swandyke trust and depend on Gracy, and most couldn’t imagine getting through pregnancy and labor without her by their sides.

But everything changes when a baby is found dead…and the evidence points to Gracy as the murderer.

She didn’t commit the crime, but clearing her name isn’t so easy when her innocence is not quite as simple, either. She knows things, and that’s dangerous. Invited into her neighbors’ homes during their most intimate and vulnerable times, she can’t help what she sees and hears. A woman sometimes says things in the birthing bed, when life and death seem suspended within the same moment. Gracy has always tucked those revelations away, even the confessions that have cast shadows on her heart.

With her friends taking sides and a trial looming, Gracy must decide whether it’s worth risking everything to prove her innocence. And she knows that her years of discretion may simply demand too high a price now…especially since she’s been keeping more than a few dark secrets of her own.

With Sandra Dallas’s incomparable gift for creating a sense of time and place and characters that capture your heart, The Last Midwife tells the story of family, community, and the secrets that can destroy and unite them.”

Amazon readers say 4.7 stars.  I think I am more along the 4 star rating.  I would have liked to feel a little more connected to the characters.  I tried and tried but it just wasn’t quite there.  It was good and worth my time… but I would recommend a few of her other books  Alice’s Tulips, The Persian Pickle Club, and The Diary of Mattie Spenser as her best books.