For nearly two hundred years, women in Ashley Tolliver's family have practiced the art of midwifery in their mountain community. Now she wants to take her skills a step further, but attending medical school means abandoning those women to whom she has dedicated her life, the mountains she loves, and the awakening of her heart.

Coming from a long line of mountain midwives, Ashley is torn between her dream of attending medical school and her guilt for abandoning the women who depend on her. Ashley Tolliver has tended the women of her small Appalachian community for years. As their midwife, she thinks she has seen it all—until a young woman gives birth at Ashley’s home and is abducted when Ashley tries to take the dangerously bleeding mother to the nearest hospital. Now Ashley is on a mission to find the woman and her newborn baby before it’s too late. Hunter McDermott is on a quest to track down his birth mother. After receiving more media attention than he could ever want for being in the right place at the right time, he receives a mysterious call from a woman claiming to be his mother. Hunter seeks out the aid of the local midwife in the mountain town where the call originated. He believes she is the only person who can help him discover his family background. Ashley isn’t prepared for Hunter’s entrance into her world or how he affects her heart and her future. He reignites dreams of starting her own family—dreams she cast aside in favor of earning her medical degree and helping her community. But is it commitment to her calling or fear of the unknown that keeps her feet firmly planted in the Appalachian soil? Or is it something else—fear of her growing feelings for Hunter—that makes her hesitant to explore the world beyond the mountains? Clean, contemporary Christian romance Stand-alone novel Includes discussion questions for book clubs Also by Laurie Alice Eakes: A Stranger’s Secret and A Lady’s Honor

In this engaging account of her career as a midwife, Vincent describes the hilarious, sometimes frightening, events surrounding the appearance of a new human being. More than a collection of unforgettable stories, "Baby Catcher" is a clarion call for a less technological, more personalized approach to childbirth in this country.

Orlean Puckett was a midwife who lived from 1844 to 1939 in Carroll County, Virginia. Aunt Orlean delivered thousands of babies, she herself, however, lost 24 children of her own. She is commemorated on the Blue Ridge Parkway by a National Park Service marker.

"Called" is a historical fiction novel about Orlene Hawks Puckett (18391939) who was a midwife in Patrick County, Virginia. While a mother herself only a short time, she carried 24 babies of her own. She was reported to have delivered over 1000 babies during her lifetime without a single loss of mother or child.

In this breathtaking debut novel, Ami McKay has created an unforgettable portrait of the struggles that women have faced to control their own bodies and to keep the best parts of tradition alive in the world of modern medicine. The Birth House is the story of Dora Rare—the first daughter in five generations of Rares. As apprentice to the outspoken Acadian midwife Miss Babineau, Dora learns to assist the women of an isolated Nova Scotian village through infertility, difficult labors, breech births, unwanted pregnancies, and even unfulfilling sex lives. During the turbulent World War I era, uncertainty and upheaval accompany the arrival of a brash new medical doctor and his promises of progress and fast, painless childbirth. Dora soon finds herself fighting to protect the rights of women as well as the wisdom that has been put into her care. A tale of tradition and science, matriarchy and paternalism, past and future, The Birth House is "a dazzling first novel." (Library Journal), and a story more timely than ever.

Kidnapped, blindfolded and driven to a desolate Rocky Mountain lodge—for midwife Rachel Devon it's the most terrifying birth she has ever attended to. But now that the baby's mother is dead, it's up to Rachel to get the child to safety. Much to Rachel's surprise, one of the kidnappers helps her escape. Cole McClure claims to be an undercover FBI agent, though Rachel doesn't trust him for a minute. He's got that sexy bad-boy edge, the type Rachel's been burned by way too often. But Cole comes through and with a blizzard bearing down on them, with killers and cops hot on their trail, they team up to find this innocent baby a home. And try to resist temptation when they're "forced" to share a bed through the cold winter nights….

The USA Today Best Seller. An enthralling new tale of courage, betrayal and survival in the hardest of circumstances that readers of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, The Secret Orphan and My Name is Eva will love.

A remarkable new voice in American fiction enchants readers with a moving and uplifting novel that celebrates the miracle of life. In The Midwife of Hope River, first-time novelist Patricia Harmon transports us to poverty stricken Appalachia during the Great Depression years of the 1930s and introduces us to a truly unforgettable heroine. Patience Murphy, a midwife struggling against disease, poverty, and prejudice—and her own haunting past—is a strong and endearing character that fans of the books of Ami McKay and Diane Chamberlain will take into their hearts, as she courageously attempts to bring new light, and life, into an otherwise cruel world.

Not since Anna Diamant’s The Red Tent or Geraldine Brooks’s People of the Book has a novel transported readers so intimately into the complex lives of women centuries ago or so richly into a story of intrigue that transcends the boundaries of history. A “lavishly detailed” (Elle Canada) debut that masterfully captures sixteenth-century Venice against a dramatic and poetic tale of suspense. Hannah Levi is renowned throughout Venice for her gift at coaxing reluctant babies from their mothers using her secret “birthing spoons.” When a count implores her to attend his dying wife and save their unborn son, she is torn. A Papal edict forbids Jews from rendering medical treatment to Christians, but his payment is enough to ransom her husband Isaac, who has been captured at sea. Can she refuse her duty to a woman who is suffering? Hannah’s choice entangles her in a treacherous family rivalry that endangers the child and threatens her voyage to Malta, where Isaac, believing her dead in the plague, is preparing to buy his passage to a new life. Told with exceptional skill, The Midwife of Venice brings to life a time and a place cloaked in fascination and mystery and introduces a captivating new talent in historical fiction.