Böcker av Patricia Harman

The women of Hope River trust midwife Patience Hester, whose skill in delivering babies is known for miles around. Even with the Great Depression behind them, troubles are not, for Europe is at war . . . and it can only be a matter of time before the U.S. enters the fray.And while some are eager to join the fight, Patience's husband, Daniel, is not. Daniel is a patriot?but he saw too much bloodshed during the first world war and has vowed never to take up arms again. His stance leads to swift punishment: the government imprisons Daniel for his beliefs.Now, Patience must support their family, fight for her husband's release, and with need greater than ever, she must also keep her practice running during this tumultuous time. With generous friends like Bitsy, stalwart neighbors, and her own indomitable strength, Patience must see them all through the war.

The women of Hope River trust midwife Patience Hester, whose skill in delivering babies is known for miles around. Even with the Great Depression behind them, troubles are not, for Europe is at war . . . and it can only be a matter of time before the U.S. enters the fray.And while some are eager to join the fight, Patience's husband, Daniel, is not. Daniel is a patriot?but he saw too much bloodshed during the first world war and has vowed never to take up arms again. His stance leads to swift punishment: the government imprisons Daniel for his beliefs.Now, Patience must support their family, fight for her husband's release, and with need greater than ever, she must also keep her practice running during this tumultuous time. With generous friends like Bitsy, stalwart neighbors, and her own indomitable strength, Patience must see them all through the war.

From the USA Today bestselling author of the Hope River series comes a new contemporary midwife novel.Say ?goodbye? to your old life, and ?hello? to the life you've been waiting for...Midwife Clara Perry is accustomed to comforting her pregnant patients...calming fathers-to-be as they anxiously await the birth of their children...ensuring the babies she delivers come safely into the world.But when Clara's life takes a nosedive, she realizes she hasn't been tending to her own needs and does something drastic: she runs away and starts over again in a place where no one knows her or the mess she's left behind in West Virginia. Heading to Sea Gull Island?a tiny, remote Canadian island?Clara is ready for anything. Well, almost. She left her passport back home, and the only way she can enter Canada is by hitching a ride on a snowmobile and illegally crossing the border. Deciding to reinvent herself, Clara takes a new identity?Sara Livingston, a writer seeking solitude. But there's no avoiding the outside world. The residents are friendly, and draw ?Sara? into their lives and confidences. She volunteers at the local medical clinic, using her midwifery skills, and forms a tentative relationship with a local police officer. But what will happen if she lets down her guard and reveals the real reason why she left her old life? One lesson soon becomes clear: no matter how far you run, you can never really hide from your past.

Midwife Patience Murphy has a gift: a talent for escorting mothers through the challenges of bringing children into the world. Working in the hardscrabble conditions of Appalachia during the Depression, Patience takes the jobs that no one else wants, helping those most in need?and least likely to pay. She knows a successful midwifery practice must be built on a foundation of openness and trust?but the secrets Patience is keeping are far too intimate and fragile for her to ever let anyone in.Honest, moving, and beautifully detailed, Patricia Harman's The Midwife of Hope River rings with authenticity as Patience faces nearly insurmountable difficulties. From the dangerous mines of West Virginia to the terrifying attentions of the Ku Klux Klan, Patience must strive to bring new light and life into an otherwise hard world.

A 2008 Indie Next PickDespite nurse-midwife Patsy Harman's own financial and personal medical trials, including her private battle with uterine cancer, she devotes herself to her patients' well-being in all aspects of their lives. They, in turn, tell her intimate stories both heartbreaking and uplifting.

Call The Midwife meets The Help in this debut novel featuring Patience Murphy, a midwife in the 1930s struggling against disease, poverty, prejudices - and her own haunting past - to bring new life into the world.

A midwife's memoir of living free and naturally against all oddsIn her first, highly praised memoir, Patricia Harman told us the stories patients brought into her exam room, and her own story of struggling to help women as a nurse-midwife in medical practice with her husband, an OB/GYN, in Appalachia. In this new book, Patsy reaches back to tell us how she first learned to deliver babies, and digs even deeper down to tell us of her youthful experiments with living a fully sustainable and natural life.Drawing heavily on her journals, Arms Wide Open goes back to a time of counter-culture idealism that the boomer generation remembers well. Patsy opens with stories of living in the wilds of Minnesota in a log cabin she and her lover build with their own hands, the only running water being the nearby streams. They set up beehives and give chase to a bear competing for the honey. Patsy gives birth and learns to help her friends deliver as naturally as possible.Weary of the cold and isolation, Patsy moves to a commune in West Virginia, where she becomes a self-taught midwife delivering babies in cabins and homes. Her stories sparkle with drama and intensity, but she wants to help more women than healthy hippie homesteaders. After a ten-year sojourn for professional training, Patsy and her husband, Tom, return to Appalachia, as a nurse-midwife and physician, where they set up a women's-health practice. They deliver babies together, this time in hospitals; care for a wide variety of gyn patients; and live in a lakeside contemporary home--but their hearts are still firmly implanted in nature. The obstetrical climate is changing. The Harmans' family is changing. The earth is changing, but Patsy's arms remain wide open to life and all it offers.Her memoir of living free and sustainably against all odds will be especially embraced by anyone who lived through the Vietnam War and commune era, and all those involved in the back-to-nature and natural-childbirth movements.