The Midwife of Hope River by Patricia

by Patricia Harmon

What an amazing read. I love the way this author writes. She writes about women, and their weaknesses and their joys. Mostly Patricia Harman writes about their strengths. This is a story of a woman who became a midwife more by accident than by design. Patience was a woman who had lost her parents at an early age, walked away from an orphanage and into the first of many adventures she was to experience. She lost a lover and a child, and eventually became a widow due to a terrible accident. Yet she found a way to survive. 

She landed in small, very poor town in West Virginia. The mines nearby provided work for some, but The Depression found its way into town and many of the richer inhabitants became poor and the poor became destitute. But life has a way of going on, and babies will be born, and so she made her living as a midwife, which she had learned from her great and beloved friend Mrs. Kelly during the years they shared a home and a way of life. Even though she had spent much of her life in cities like Pittsburgh and Chicago, she took to rural living like one who was born to it, and was finally living a life she enjoyed and was a respected member of the community. But even country life had its pitfalls, and she still had a challenge or two ahead of her. A self described warrior, she made her way, and eventually found more than a life she was content with, she found a way to be happy.