The Midwife of Hope River
Review by Nancy Patience Murphy didn’t start out to be a midwife. In fact, Patience Murphy began life as Elizabeth Snyder whose mother was a teacher and whose father was lost in Lake Michigan. Pregnant at 16 by her boyfriend, she lost the child, she married laser, killed that husband in error and moved with friends to the Appalachian mountains of Hope River, West Virginia to hide among the miners and hard working farmers. There she became a midwife by lot, not by choice and was quite good at it. In the sad, joyful and revealing book, Patricia Harman tells of the women, mostly unlearned, their husbands - both black and white - and the KKK whose presence was, in the early 1930’s, returning to the area. Patience lived hand to mouth, she delivered children that died, more children that lived and succeeded the 2 midwives before here. She became attached to the people, the land and the animals of the area. She bartered for food, flour, sugar and wood for her fire in the winter. ...