Sixteen-year-old midwife Gaia Stone is in the wasteland with nothing but her baby sister, a handful of supplies, and a rumor to guide her when she is captured by the people of Sylum, a dystopian society where she must follow a strict social code or never see her sister again.
Gaia succeeds in leading her people to Wharfton and the Enclave, but rebellion there threatens them all just when everything they have dreamed of seems to be at hand.
In medieval England, a nameless, homeless girl is taken in by a sharp-tempered midwife, and in spite of obstacles and hardship, eventually gains the three things she most wants: a full belly, a contented heart, and a place in this world.
Cut off from the hospital and rescue squad by an ice storm, midwife Sibyl Danforth makes the decision to perform a cesarean section on a patient she believes has died of a stroke during labor, but when her assistant tells police the mother was alive during the surgery, Sibyl and the entire community are drawn into a gripping trial.
Sixteen-year-old Kat, whose mother is a home-birth midwife, feels betrayed when a popular, beautiful classmate gets pregnant and forms a bond with Kat's mother that Kat herself never had.
Martha longs to leave her island home off the Louisiana coast and go to high school where she can learn more than the ways of her midwife grandmother and perhaps someday broaden the lives of the superstitious villagers.
In 1355, Margaret of Ashbury has clerics refuse to help her write a book. Starvation persuades Brother Gregory to take on the task and we discover a very resourceful woman.
Elizabeth, one in a long line of midwives in Kettle Valley, Virginia, learns valuable lessons about faith and identity from her adopted daughter, a healer, after suffering in a loveless marriage.
In medieval England, a nameless, homeless girl is taken in by a sharp-tempered midwife, and in spite of obstacles and hardship, eventually gains the three things she most wants: a full belly, a contented heart, and a place in this world.
