If you liked “Call the Midwife,” you might enjoy…

I devoured this novel a few weeks ago, in that great gulping way where you’re enjoying a book so much that you look forward to getting back home so you can get back to it and then realize that you have to slow down or it’s going to be over too soon. It has many of the pleasures of Jennifer Worth’s memoir Call the Midwife, but it’s a thoroughly American story, taking place in Depression-era Appalachia, and the midwife, Patience Murphy, is apprentice-trained with a mysterious past. If you don’t like progressive tellings of American history, you might not like this one, but if you have a soft spot for the labor movement and, well, labor–you’ll love it, as I did.