Blog Stop Book Tour: Midwife of The Blue Ridge

Midwife of the Blue Ridge
Christine Blevins
Berkely Trade Paperback

I know already I'm not going to be able to do this book justice in my review. It's that good. I absolutely LOVED it. Go. Get. It.

Not only was Midwife of the Blue Ridge a departure from my usual reading, it was a departure from the 21st century. It's a great story of a woman who leaves her home in Scotland and enters a completely foreign place - and finds *her* place.

Midwife has the appeal of an old-fashioned adventure, not unlike Huckleberry Finn. But this is no children's novel. I have to warn you - the violence and anguish of pioneer life is graphically depicted, as real and raw as if I was seeing it happen in front of me. But this added in every sense to the effect of transporting me to the rugged and beautiful wilderness of the Blue Ridge, and the hardships that were a part of our American history.

Maggie was an orphan who found a home with a skilled Scottish midwife and learned the trade as she grew. When she was an adult, she got passage aboard a ship to America in exchange for four years of slavery in the New World. Maggie's beauty, wit and outspokenness are as much hazards as they are the tools she uses to survive.

There is a love story here, but you won't find the same story arc as in a traditional romance novel. And ... (see this is where it gets hard not to give too much away) ... the author does not spare her character with formulaic plot devices involving brave knights sweeping in to rescue her. And that's all you're going to get me to say. ;)

The historical details are deftly painted into the novel; at no point did I feel bogged down by facts. And this feat is especially impressive to me since the main character is a healer, so botanical and common names of herbs and natural remedies are sprinkled throughout.

I realized while reading Midwife of the Blue Ridge that I have a personal measure of truly great books: I don’t want to reach the end, but I am unable to slow my reading.

Get. This. Book. It is awesome. Truly. In fact, I might start reading it again. (So you can’t have my copy.)

To read more about the author, and to see what other bloggers are saying, visit Blog Stop Book Tours.

Blog Stop Book Review: The Bunko Babes

Blog Stop Book Tours helps authors promote their books by giving bloggers books to review. (If you have a blog and you like free books, you might want to check this out.)

I have the privilege of reviewing The Bunko Babes, by Leah Starr Baker. (See an interview with the author at BlogStop’s main site.)

The Bunko Babes is a departure from my usual reading diet of suspense and humor (but it has a bit of both). It reads like a journal, written entirely in present tense (which would have been annoying if the author hadn’t been completely consistent). The main character, Becca Thornton, is an upbeat (if somewhat shallow and sheltered) woman with twin children, a rock-steady husband, and a fun group of girlfriends – the Bunko Babes - who gather weekly to play Bunko in each other’s homes. Several of the friendships go back years - the characters’ problems and proclivities are paraded out at that night’s Bunko game.

During the game, Becca gets a call from her widowed mother who tells her she is getting remarried. Becca’s reaction to the news sets up one of the major conflicts that both reveal her character and give her plenty of room for growth.

Later in the story, Becca discovers an even more serious crisis she must endure. After months of odd aches and pains and a general fatigue, she's diagnosed with systemic lupus. In some passages, Becca’s symptoms were shown so vividly I felt uncomfortable reading them. Which is great. What wasn’t so great is that when Becca talks to friends and family about the disease, her dialogue reads like a brochure.

I had other problems with the book that sometimes kept me from engaging fully. For one, it wasn’t clear to me whether the author intentionally gave Becca the unlikeable characteristics of an unthankful, judgmental and self-centered child. And my two favorite characters – the mother’s new fiancé and Becca’s friend Mercedes – weren’t given nearly enough attention in my opinion. Alternatively, there was a park ranger and his wife who were described in detail but never seemed to play any real part in the novel.

Despite these things, I found myself wondering what would happen next. In a way, it was like reading letters from an acquaintance. Many of the situations seemed to be drawn from the author’s own life and her personal struggle with lupus.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from The Bunko Babes, and after reading it, I’m still not sure what I got. It was refreshing to read a book with Christian characters triumphing in very realistic circumstances. And throughout the novel, Becca has moments when she not only realizes that she was wrong, but understands how to begin to make the changes in her thinking. The Bunko Babes shows her subtle but relentless growth as a person and as a Christian, moving from being self-centered to truly interested in the happiness and well-being of others. Her friends and her family gather around her for support throughout the book, but only towards the end of the story does she seem to really realize what they bring to her life – despite her repeated assurances to the contrary. It isn’t until the end of the book that she really cares about their happiness and well-being.

The Bunko Babes was an interesting look into the growth of a woman’s character from leading a sheltered existence to being a woman with the strength to stand up under hardship and get outside of herself to care about others. It didn’t grip me from the first few pages, but it grew on me.