Book overview
Vienna, 1847. Childbirth is a dangerous affair, especially for women laboring in the doctor's ward at Vienna's maternity hospital rather than its midwifery clinic. Even midwifery student Anna Maier wants nothing to do with medical men after losing her sister to the mysterious, rampant doctor's plague known as childbed fever.
But when Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, a maverick obstetrician, opens an investigation on childbed fever, Anna sees a chance to find answers to her sister's death. The two begin a discrete partnership-verboten in its crossing of gender lines and direct insubordination to hospital rules-and Anna soon finds herself in anatomy theatres where the only other woman in the room is the cadaver.
With women delivering and dying every day, Anna must choose between the safety of her own compassionate profession and the danger of stepping beyond it for a greater good. If she fails, she risks losing her sister a thousand times over again. And if she succeeds, what does that make her-a traitor, a medical man, or a maverick herself?
A pivotal time in history told with the clear-eyed determination of a young woman in science, The Maverick's Midwife is the story of what it means to try when the barriers are high and the outcome is uncertain-but it just might all be worth it.