Whoever heard of a midwife as a literary heroine? Yet midwifery is the very stuff of drama. Every child is conceived either in love or lust, is born in pain, followed by joy or sometimes remorse. A midwife is in the thick of it, she sees it all.

Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times (ed. Penguin, 2012) - ISBN: 9781101614402