This Valentine’s Day marks the twentieth anniversary of the publication of The Birth House by Ami McKay!
“Each day brings another handful of opportunities. It’s up to you to make the best of what you’re given.”― Ami McKay, The Birth House
A #1 national bestseller, a finalist for CBC Canada Reads, the winner of the CBA Libris Fiction Book of the Year Award, and the Evergreen Award, Ami McKay’s The Birth House was her debut novel. Set in Scots Bay, Nova Scotia, during World War I, it is “an unforgettable tale of the struggles women have faced to have control of their own bodies and to keep the best parts of tradition alive in the world of modern medicine.” It was also named one of the 150 books that all Nova Scotians should read by the Nova Scotia Library Association.
“If women lose the right to say where and how they birth their children, then they will have lost something that’s as dear to life as breathing.” ― Ami McKay, The Birth House
Spanning the 20th century Ami McKay takes a primitive and superstitious rural community in Nova Scotia and creates a rich tableau of characters to tell the story of childbirth from its most secretive early practices to modern maternity as we know it. Epic and enchanting, ‘The Birth House’ is a gripping saga about a midwife’s struggles in the wilds of Nova Scotia. As a child in the small village of Scot’s Bay, Dora Rare — the first female in five generations of Rares — is befriended by Miss Babineau, an elderly midwife with a kitchen filled with folk remedies and a talent for telling tales. Dora becomes her apprentice at the outset of World War I, and together they help women through difficult births, unwanted pregnancies and even unfulfilling marriages. But their traditions and methods are threatened when a Doctor comes to town with promises of painless childbirth, and sets about undermining Dora’s credibility. Death and deception, accusations and exile follow, as Dora and her friends fight to protect each other and the women’s wisdom of their community. Hauntingly written and alive with historical detail, ‘The Birth House’ is an unforgettable, page-turning debut.– Synopsis
Ami describes a slice of time in rural Nova Scotia during the First World War, a time before electricity came to North Mountain, when Midwives were sought after for not only ‘Catching Babies’, but for coughs, fevers, and other ailments. I liked how she included the very real events of the time, including the Halifax Explosion, the Women’s Suffrage Movement, and the Spanish Flu Outbreak. I adored the Occasional Knitters Society and how Ami told her story through not just the text, but letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles, creating a scrapbook effect. – Sue Slade, Goodreads review September, 2021
In 1999, Ami moved from Chicago to an old farmhouse on the Bay of Fundy, lured here by a man who quoted Byron (“She walks in beauty like the night”). While establishing her garden, she unearthed many old relics, including old medicine bottles, bits of broken China, and an old serving spoon, so well used that the edge of the spoon had been worn down to an angle. She began to daydream about the woman who once lived in her house.
When she was expecting her second child, word spread that she was looking for a midwife to assist in a home birth. Neighbours started telling her tales about the history of her home, which once belonged to a turn-of-the-century midwife. “She not only traveled to other homes in the area, but she also opened her home to the women in the community as a birth house. She took the women in, saw them through labour and delivery, and then both mother and child would stay at the house for a week or more after the birth.”- Ami McKay, Voice of the Moon Newsletter.
These were the seeds that grew into the novel, The Birth House.
“My home on Spider Hill, this birth house, has seen her share of life and babies. Of course, there’s fewer of them now that every other place has a car parked out front and every other young man has gone to war again. Most of those boys were born in my house; they are my sons too. Still, women come to me for “whatever needs doing,” a bottle of Miss B.’s cough syrup, a cup of tea with mitts, a few minutes’ rest with her feet up and my hands on her belly to say, Everything’s fine, just fine.” Some of them, when the time comes, have gotten quite good at waiting too long to go to the hospital, their husbands roaring up the road and to my door. I never mind it.
Mabel had two more here…
Bertine had a boy.
Precious married Sam Gower…and was soon carrying twins.
Pregnant or not, the Occasional Knitters never miss a Wednesday night.
No woman or child shall be turned away.
There have been those who have stayed here a day, a week and even a month or more. Every woman needs a sanctuary.” ― Ami McKay, The Birth House