This was a page-turning vacation read, perhaps upmarket fiction or commercial fiction (not quite literary fiction but also not junk). I had no expectations because I knew nothing about the author, and I had not read anything about the book; however, I had seen it at the front of many bookstores. I bought it because the woman standing next to me told me it was good, and I was looking for a longish decent paperback.

The story is loosely based on  (inspired by) a woman named Martha Ballard, a mid-late 1700s midwife living in Hollowell, Maine near the Kennebec River, and its premise is to bring forth small town life in the early United States as well as to delve into a mystery involving a murder and a rape accusation, and the way those crimes are handled in the late 1700s. 

It also shows a great deal about childbirth and midwifery as a profession and the role Ballard and others like her play not just in the birthing room but also in the courtroom when a woman births a child out of wedlock (for which she must pay a fine and suffer public shame).

In general I liked the book, though there are scenes and a few relationships that seemed less believable than they should (Martha and her too perfect husband is an example) and sometimes the language felt the same way though I am no expert in 18th century small town language. 

What I did like was the way Lawhon framed the timing of the story. It begins in present time which is late 1700s but every so often it goes back in time to Martha’s early marriage and early years and the year that she lost three of her children. I appreciate that we find out details of these events as the story progresses rather than chronologically because as we come to know the main character better, her backstory become more intriguing.

For a more accurate depiction of Martha Ballard’s life, the biography “A Midwife’s Tale” by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is supposed to be excellent (I have not read it), and the author highly recommends it. She includes many of the facts from this biography and Ballard’s journals but takes liberties with the story (which she fully discloses).