A Midwife’s Journey

 
A work of fiction inspired by the life of the author’s great-grandmother.
 
It is 1894 and diphtheria has ravaged the Russian colony of Molotschna (present day Ukraine). Margaretha Rahn has just buried three of her four children when her husband Abraham decides they must emigrate to the United States.
 
​This is the familiar story of women who leave home and family to face the rigors and deprivations of a life homesteading on the prairie. What is different is that Margaretha Rahn is a hebamme, a midwife, and she comes from a tradition of midwives who are formally trained and considered blessed by God.
 
​Margaretha delivers babies and sometimes helps prevent pregnancies, using her midwifery and healing skills in snowstorms and fires, in the bitter cold of long winters, in the promise of spring, and not always with the approval of her church community.
 
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