The Midwife - Jolina Petersheim

Dear Readers,

This is the third time I have started this review.  Not because The Midwife by Jolina Petersheim is not good, but because I can’t find the right words to use to tell you how really good it is.  It is truly a story about walking in someone else’s shoes to understand what they have been through. 

Rhoda keeps everyone at a distance.  All the girls and young ladies that come through the home for unwed mothers that she works for, her fellow workers and midwives, the handy man/driver, everyone.  She does this because it seems like to her, everyone she loves abandons her and she no longer wants to risk her heart.

She works at Hopen Haus, a Mennonite support home.  When the community left the area it left the little house with little or no support and they are struggling to survive.  Rhoda sees it as just one more abandonment. 

I really can’t go on more or I will start giving the storyline away.  I was not too excited by Rhoda most of the story, but as I went on the journey that was her life I began to understand her more and more and that is what life is about also. 

There were so many different threads to this story.  It doesn’t make it hard to follow, it makes for a richer story.  Each person’s thread was important to what was happening at Hopen Haus.  I think that is what I liked the most about this book, how each person involved effected those around her for very different reasons, some good and some bad, and shaped the others because of it. 

 

Happy Reading,