Unforgettable Midwife Books to Read Now

I am so proud to champion this gorgeous debut from DeLozier, which was selected as our January MomAdvice Book Club book.

As a mysterious plague descends in 14th-century France, a gifted teen healer finds herself drawn into an unexpected apprenticeship for the Pope & serving as the Queen's midwife.

Called to treat the sick and wounded when no one else dares, Eleanore’s skill and bravery become both her greatest asset and the source of dangerous scrutiny. As Black Death ravages Avignon and prejudice rises, she risks everything in the pursuit of knowledge.

Torn between duty, love, and survival, she must choose whether to flee or stay and face down the forces that would silence her in a story that surprises readers with its twists.

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This well-researched dual-timeline story explores present-day and 1950s Ireland, where a young woman becomes the midwife at a home for "fallen girls" and must risk everything to protect them as she uncovers more.

Later, as a granddaughter discovers a tattered birth certificate or an unknown baby born in Ireland, she embarks on a trip to discover her heritage and more about where her “true home” lies.

Laura Anthony writes emotionally rich women’s fiction that explores the courage of women navigating personal and historical challenges. While you wait for this one, pick up The Women on Platform Two.

Release Date- 12 May 2026

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Schatz's moving adult debut was inspired by her mother, whose experiences with two back-to-back pregnancies in the 1950s and 60s landed her in a maternity home and led to her surrendering her children up for adoption.

In this historical fiction novel, a teenage prodigy becomes pregnant in her senior year and is sent to a home where she's uninformed about what happens next for her or her child.

In the novel's second half, another mother delivers, and she witnesses a remarkable midwifery delivery in a beautiful scene that brought tears to my eyes.

This novel does a great job of juxtaposing birth experiences, especially in this era, where women are given little information about the birth process or their bodies. I can't wait for you to hear Kate's story on Book Gang soon.

Release Date- 3 March 2026

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This well-researched gothic novel centers on a noblewoman who discovers, through a hidden doctor's letter, that she will not survive her birth. As she has navigated loss over and over, it's no surprise, but when she meets a midwife who offers to help her, she jumps at the chance.

Yet, Alice, the midwife who can help soon, stands accused of witchcraft, and it becomes Fleetwood's responsibility to save her and her child.

Drawing on historical figures, the author intertwines the Witch Trials of 1612 into the stories of real women suspected of witchcraft, a common theme in the practice of midwifery.

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In 15th-century China, Tan Yunxian was a woman raised by her physician grandparents and trained in the mysteries of women’s medicine at a time when female doctors were almost unheard of.

From her friendship with a midwife-in-training to her own challenges within marriage and tradition, Tan learns that healing isn’t just about remedy—it’s about listening, touching, and belonging. Along the way, she defies societal strictures to care for women of all classes, guided by wisdom passed down through sisterhood and shared purpose.

Through tickling of pulse, gentle inquiry, and the courage to act, she becomes a healer whose legacy outlives her era. A luminous story of friendship, medical practice, and women caring for women against the odds. You can never go wrong with a Lisa See story.

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Readers may be surprised to know that Sally Hepworth, known for her twisty thrillers, once wrote this backlist novel about three generations of women who are all midwives.

A third-generation midwife is determined to keep the details surrounding her own pregnancy—including the identity of the baby’s father— hidden from her family and co-workers for as long as possible.

She isn't the only one keeping secrets in her family, though, and readers will uncover the secrets of her other family members in this satisfying story.

Donoghue’s story documents three harrowing days during the 1918 flu pandemic.

The Pull of the Stars places us inside an overwhelmed Dublin maternity ward where life and death arrive side by side. Midwife Julia Power works tirelessly to protect laboring women as doctors and nurses fall ill, medical knowledge falters, and fear presses in from every direction.

When two unexpected women step into the ward to help, the space becomes a fragile sanctuary—one built on skill, intuition, and radical compassion.

Emma Donoghue captures midwifery as both science and calling, showing how touch, presence, and listening can be as lifesaving as medicine. Urgent, intimate, and quietly hopeful, this is a novel about bringing life into the world when the world itself feels on the brink.

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This was a 5-star read when I read Odell's story in 2016.

Set on a Mississippi plantation before and long after the Civil War, The Healing is a haunting, generational novel where a plantation mistress loses her child to cholera, and her unraveling leads her to claim an enslaved baby as her own.

Polly Shine, an enslaved healer whose wisdom and defiance challenge everything the household believes about illness, authority, and survival, changes the trajectory of this story.

Now, seventy-five years later, that stolen child—now a healer herself—shares her story with an abandoned girl, revealing how identity can be reclaimed even after it’s been stripped away.

Written by Jonathan Odell, a white male author, The Healing invites readers to engage with the enslaved experience and the traditions of Black folk healing, offering a lens into lives and histories often erased from mainstream narratives.

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When a grieving nurse-midwife seeks a fresh start in the remote mountain town of Virgin River, she expects quiet roads and easy days, but instead finds a community in need of her cradle-to-grave care. In tending to births, injuries, and broken hearts, she discovers that healing others also heals her own wounds.

Alongside rugged locals and newfound friends, she learns what it means to belong, to belong deeply, and to love in a place where every life is entwined.

This novel offers a warm, restorative story about community, second chances, and the midwife at its heart who helps mend more than just bodies.

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Midwife and nurse Carrie Ballentyne leaves New York for the rugged New Mexico Territory in 1857, answering a call to care for women and children on the frontier. As she travels by steamboat, rail, and wagon, she meets hazards and wonders that challenge her strength and compassion in equal measure.

Alongside a loyal brother and a compelling new love, she discovers that healing sometimes means facing the past to protect the future. It's a tale of survival, belonging, and the profound labor of care on the edge of America.

This novel is an 800-page epic that’s a big commitment, but rewards readers with sweeping frontier adventure, richly drawn characters, and the unforgettable journey of a midwife carving out life in ways that have paid off for many readers.

The Red Tent reimagines the Biblical Dinah’s life as a woman, mother, and midwife deeply rooted in the bonds of her “mothers”—the women who taught her about birth, death, and the wisdom of the red tent.

The reader follows the lives of these women through her childlike eyes until she becomes a woman herself, finds herself called to midwifery, and journeys into a foreign land. It is beautifully told as you literally see her dialogue change and her own awareness of womanhood grow.

This rich, poignant retelling brings the untold depths of female experience to life with lyricism and gravity, delivering a beloved modern classic about kinship, ritual, and the sacred work of midwives and women who bind communities together.

At the heart of this story are traditions of herbal healing and conjure, midwifery, and the power to care for a community even as forces of prejudice and transformation swirl around these three unforgettable women in the South.

Atakora’s lush, evocative historical novel moves forward and backward in time in episodes labeled Slaverytime, Wartime, Freedomtime, or the Ravaging. While shifting timelines can feel confusing at first, you soon fall into the rhythm and crave each section of this phenomenal book.  

It’s another 5-star reading experience that I wish more readers would pick up.

In Hamnet,  O’Farrell reimagines Shakespeare’s wife, Agnes, as a woman rooted in the natural world—part midwife, part herbalist, entirely attuned to life’s fragile thresholds.

When illness sweeps through her household, Agnes’s knowledge of plants and her intuition, stand in quiet contrast to the era’s limited medicine. The novel lingers in the intimate spaces where women care for bodies, usher in new life, and sit beside loss.

Grief unfolds slowly, shaped by touch, memory, and the unspoken labor of healing that continues even when cures fail. Lyrical and immersive, this novel was among my favorite reads last year.

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Set during the outbreak of the Black Death in a small English village, Year of Wonders follows a young widow who becomes an unlikely caretaker as plague reshapes daily life.

With doctors gone and fear rampant, women step into roles of healing, birthing, and survival out of sheer necessity. The novel captures how knowledge is shared hand to hand, mother to daughter, neighbor to neighbor.

Gritty, intimate, and quietly hopeful, this is a story about endurance and the fragile systems that hold communities together.

"When she fell asleep, the world was doomed. When she awoke, it was dead."

In a post-pandemic world where most of humanity has vanished, one midwife travels across a desolate landscape, preserving knowledge, aiding survivors, and confronting the harsh realities of survival and gender in a broken society.

Elison's story weaves environmental collapse and gritty moral complexity into a gripping journey that won the 2014 Philip K. Dick award.

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The suicide of beloved midwife Noelle leaves her closest friends reeling, and when they find an unfinished letter filled with a shocking secret, they set out to uncover the truth behind the woman they thought they knew.

Told with emotional insight and surprising twists, this gripping novel blends mystery and heart as it explores how far we’ll go to protect those we love and how much truth we’re willing to face. I devoured this moving story in a single day.

Martha Ballard is a midwife in 1789 whose meticulous diary quietly documents the truths of her community.

When a man accused of sexual assault is pulled dead from the frozen river, Martha’s examination reveals signs of murder, only to have her expertise dismissed by the male authorities in charge. As winter deepens, her diary becomes both evidence and resistance, illuminating the lives of women whose voices are rarely believed.

Atmospheric and gripping, this historical fiction reads like a murder mystery that many readers have loved, becoming a word-of-mouth publishing sensation.

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A teenage girl's life is upended when her mother, a respected midwife, is accused of causing a patient’s death during childbirth.

Told through the daughter’s perspective, the story captures the confusion of loving someone who may not be innocent. As legal questions collide with medical ethics, Bohjalian skillfully examines professional responsibility and the long shadow of secrets.

Compelling and emotionally grounded, this novel invites readers to wrestle with the gray spaces and was selected in 1998 as an Oprah's Book Club pick, which launched the author's career into the mainstream.

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