MIDWIFE OF THE BLUE RIDGE

Author: Christine Blevins ISBN: 9780425221686 8/2008 HISTORICAL FICTION Publisher: BERKLEY
Time Period: Mid 1700's Scotland, America

They called her Dark Maggie for her thick black hair, but the name also had a more sinister connotation. As the lone survivor of an attack on her village, she was thought to be cursed-and unfit for marriage. Maggie is not cursed but gifted with quick wits, skilled in medicine, and trained as a midwife. Venturing to the colonies as an indentured servant, she hopes to escape the superstitions of the old country, help women bring new life into the world, even in the most primitive and isolated corners of an unsettled landand find a home of her own. What she discovers is a new world fraught with new dangers-and, having given up her own freedom to join a people that yearn to be free, she must rely on her talent for survival now more than ever...

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

MIDWIFE OF THE BLUE RIDGE is one great example of why I love historical fiction mixed with romance so much. It has all of the elements I look for in a keeper read, including lifelike characters and a storyline I think about long after I've closed the cover.

The story begins with a quick glance into young orphan Maggie Duncan's life in Scotland, right after the battle of Culloden when she guides home a mortally wounded Scotsman to his wife, Hannah, who just happens to be a midwife and healer. When the Scotsman dies, Maggie settles in with Hannah who takes the lovely but "different" looking child under wing and teaches her the arts of midwifery and healing. But the villagers think Maggie's cursed, so when Hannah herself becomes terminally ill she begs Maggie to find her way as an indentured servant to the land of new opportunity—America—which Maggie eventually does.

After a rather eventful voyage across the Atlantic, Maggie is bought by Seth, a young backwoodsman desperate to save the life of his pregnant and ailing wife and who needs help to manage his ever growing brood of children. For four years and under contract Maggie must serve as their servant before she can gain her freedom. While she knows she is lucky to be taken in by such a good family, her dreams for a future may never be realized when her new settled-in life is interrupted by events she cannot change, and her path once again crosses that of a cruel aristocrat who plagued her during her crossover voyage and is determined to own her at all costs.

Christine Blevins does such a wonderful job mixing together bits of colonial life, both the good and bad, with the perils pioneers of early America faced, including their relations with the Native Americans, famine and disease, just to name a few. It was also a very violent world wherein rape, torture and a lot of bloodshed occurred, all of which are part of Maggie's story and can make for a little squirmy reading at times, especially if you're the least bit squeamish. However, that violence is necessary to the realistic backdrop Ms. Blevins tries to paint and to the complete story she has to tell, and tell it well, she does.

And the characters! Maggie is such a resilient, determined and spirited young woman, a fighter standing strong when facing her hardships and enduring all with courage and a defiant spirit. The love story between she and Tom Roberts, a handsome back woodsman who'd rather be gone off on the hunt than tied to any woman, as well as the trials and tribulations of Seth and his family and the other secondary characters that flit in and out of the picture, made this a one-sit read for me and a story I still find pretty hard to forget.

However, I do have one minor criticism, and that's with the title. While I realize Maggie's profession is that of a midwife, it is her healing skills that are brought front and center here. The detail with which Ms. Blevins goes into regarding many of the herbal remedies and which plants are good for which ailments back in those days, illustrates that she's really done her research. But the midwifery skills are basically overlooked—just two births, if I counted right—which made the title seem a little bit misleading. I had expected more experiences on birthings than on reading about Maggie's doctoral skills, but even so, it's all very fascinating and did make a bit more sense to me by the end of the story.

I highly recommend MIDWIFE OF THE BLUE RIDGE, a debut book by an author who's next story I will anxiously be awaiting. MIDWIFE OF THE BLUE RIDGE is a wonderful book with true-to-life characters and a story this reviewer won't soon forget.

Nancy Davis