num_pages: 444
description: PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • Drawing on the diaries of one woman in eighteenth-century Maine, "A truly talented historian unravels the fascinating life of a community that is so foreign, and yet so similar to our own" ( The New York Times Book Review).Between 1785 and 1812 a midwife and healer named Martha Ballard kept a diary that recorded her arduous work (in 27 years she attended 816 births) as well as her domestic life in Hallowell, Maine. On the basis of that diary, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich gives us an intimate and densely imagined portrait, not only of the industrious and reticent Martha Ballard but of her society. At once lively and impeccably scholarly, A Midwife's Tale is a triumph of history on a human scale.
language: English
title: A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812
titlecomplete: A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812
genres: Historical, Biography, Womens, American History, Feminism, Nonfiction, Medical, History, Memoir, Biography Memoir
ratings_count: 7353
places: Hallowell, Maine
awards: awardedAt: 662716800000
name: Pulitzer Prize
category: History, awardedAt: 662716800000
name: Bancroft Prize, awardedAt: 631180800000
name: John H. Dunning Prize in American History, awardedAt: 631180800000
name: Joan Kelly Memorial Prize in Women's History
publisher: Vintage Books