Download or read book Call The Midwife written by Jennifer Worth and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2009-05-14 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating slice of social history - Jennifer Worth's tales of being a midwife in 1950s London, now a major BBC TV series. Jennifer Worth came from a sheltered background when she became a midwife in the Docklands in the 1950s. The conditions in which many women gave birth just half a century ago were horrifying, not only because of their grimly impoverished surroundings, but also because of what they were expected to endure. But while Jennifer witnessed brutality and tragedy, she also met with amazing kindness and understanding, tempered by a great deal of Cockney humour. She also earned the confidences of some whose lives were truly stranger, more poignant and more terrifying than could ever be recounted in fiction. Attached to an order of nuns who had been working in the slums since the 1870s, Jennifer tells the story not only of the women she treated, but also of the community of nuns (including one who was accused of stealing jewels from Hatton Garden) and the camaraderie of the midwives with whom she trained. Funny, disturbing and incredibly moving, Jennifer's stories bring to life the colourful world of the East End in the 1950s.

Download or read book Shadows of the Workhouse written by Jennifer Worth and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1950s Jennifer Worth was a district midwife in the Docklands of East London where the aftermath of the war meant many lived in shocking conditions. She worked with the Nursing Sisters of St John the Divine, nurses and midwives whose vocation was to work amongst the poorest of the poor. Despite the official closure of the workhouses in 1930, there was nowhere else for many inmates to go so they changed their names and carried on much as before. In 'Shadows of the Workhouse', Jennifer tells the stories of the men and women she met who began their lives in the workhouse.

Download or read book The Midwife Trilogy written by Jennifer Worth and published by George Weidenfeld & Nicholson. This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This omnibus edition of Call the Midwife, Shadows of the Workhouse and Farewell to the East End chronicles Jennifer Worth's career as a midwife from start to finish, from her arrival in the war-scarred Docklands as a wide-eyed trainee, to the demolition of the tenements and subsequent closure of Nonnatus House. It provides a fascinating snapshot of social history, documenting the East End in the days when there was a real sense of community, when times were tough but there was plenty of good humour and neighbourly support to help the inhabitants through the harsh econonic climate. The book also enables readers to follow Jennifer's personal story, as she discovers the amazing resilience of a population still bearing the scars of war, and the vibrant community of nuns with whom she lives and who teach her the skills of midwifery. In stories that are funny, disturbing and moving in equal measure, we meet prostitutes and abortionists, bigamists and mischievous nuns, and see Jennifer earn the confidence of people whose lives are often stranger than fiction.

Download or read book In the Midst of Life written by Ambrose Bierce and published by Standard Ebooks. This book was released on 2022-10-14T01:00:11Z with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first major collection of Ambrose Bierce’s short stories, In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians went through multiple editions and titles, with Bierce adding, removing, and revising the stories each time. The version of the stories as collected here follows the final selection and revisions made by Bierce for his Collected Works, Volume 2, published in 1909, and is broken up into two sections, “Soldiers” and “Civilians.” Bierce fought for the Union in the American Civil War from the very first organized action at Philippi. He went on to fight in some of the deadliest battles of the war, at Shiloh and Chickamauga. He joined Sherman’s army on its march to Atlanta, and was grievously wounded in the head at Kennesaw Mountain. These locations serve as backdrops in his gritty and realist short stories in the “Soldiers” collection, most especially in the surreal story “Chickamauga.” While these stories are set in the war, Bierce covers a wide range of themes, from the fear of death in “Parker Adderson, Philosopher,” the requirements of duty for a soldier in “A Horseman in the Sky,” and what one might do for love in “Killed at Resaca.” Perhaps the most well-known story in “Soldiers” is “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” Kurt Vonnegut called it “the greatest American short story,” saying “It is a flawless example of American genius, like ‘Sophisticated Lady’ by Duke Ellington or the Franklin stove.” Bierce, much like Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft, was an American pioneer in what he called his “tall tales”—psychological, supernatural, grotesque, and horror fiction. Many stories in “Civilians,” such as “The Man and the Snake,” “A Holy Terror,” and “The Suitable Surroundings,” foreshadow his later and darker works as studies in psychological horror. “The Eyes of the Panther” is a tragic, near-supernatural (though the reader is left guessing) tale of a woman of “feline beauty” and the man seeking her hand. Other stories found in the collection are satirical and ironic, like “The Famous Gilson Bequest” and “The Applicant.” Bierce’s writing earned him the title “Bitter Bierce” from his contemporaries, as one finds precious little hope and compassion in his stories, with death—often cruel—a recurring theme. A very rare exception can be found in “A Lady from Redhorse,” an epistolary romance. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

Download or read book Letters to the Midwife written by Jennifer Worth and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2014-02-13 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Letters to the Midwife is a wonderful collection of correspondence received by Jennifer Worth, offering a fascinating glimpse into a long-lost world. Along with readers' responses and personal histories, it is filled with all sorts of heart-warming gems. There are stories from other midwives, lorry drivers, even a seamstress, all with tales to tell. Containing previously unpublished material describing her time spent in Paris and some journal entries, this is also a portrait of Jennifer herself, complete with a moving introduction by her family about the woman they knew and loved.

Download or read book Summary of Jennifer Worth s Call the Midwife written by Milkyway Media and published by Milkyway Media. This book was released on 2022-05-02 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview: #1 I was a midwife, and I was on my way to deliver a baby. It was cold and raining outside, and I was pedalpowered. The sound of the moving river was always present. #2 I was able to talk to Muriel as she was having her baby. I gave her a sterile sheet, and two fingers into her vagina. The head was well down, and her waters had not yet broken. I told her everything was fine, and that she had not far to go now. #3 The second stage of labor is when the baby’s head is delivered. It is often painful, but a woman will be elated during this stage. The baby’s heart will be beating normally, but the raised heartbeat shows how much the baby goes through during birth. #4 The delivery of the baby was successful, and the baby was delivered whole with no pieces torn off and left behind in the uterus. The placenta must be delivered, and it must be delivered whole with no pieces torn off and left behind in the uterus.

Download or read book And I Don t Want to Live This Life written by Deborah Spungen and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2011-10-12 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Honest and moving . . . Her painful tale is engrossing.”—Washington Post Book World For most of us, it was just another horrible headline. But for Deborah Spungen, the mother of Nancy, who was stabbed to death at the Chelsea Hotel, it was both a relief and a tragedy. Here is the incredible story of an infant who never stopped screaming, a toddler who attacked people, a teenager addicted to drugs, violence, and easy sex, a daughter completely out of control—who almost destroyed her parents’ marriage and the happiness of the rest of her family.

Download or read book Summary of Jennifer Worth s Call the Midwife written by Everest Media, and published by Everest Media LLC. This book was released on 2022-03-21T22:59:00Z with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 I was a midwife, and I was on my way to deliver a baby. It was cold and raining outside, and I was pedal-powered. The sound of the moving river was always present. #2 I was able to talk to Muriel as she was having her baby. I gave her a sterile sheet, and two fingers into her vagina. The head was well down, and her waters had not yet broken. I told her everything was fine, and that she had not far to go now. #3 The second stage of labor is when the baby’s head is delivered. It is often painful, but a woman will be elated during this stage. The baby’s heart will be beating normally, but the raised heartbeat shows how much the baby goes through during birth. #4 The delivery of the baby was successful, and the baby was delivered whole with no pieces torn off and left behind in the uterus. The placenta must be delivered, and it must be delivered whole with no pieces torn off and left behind in the uterus.

Download or read book The Midwife s Sister written by Christine Lee and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-03-12 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Our childhood came to an end when our parents parted and from then on Jennifer was placed in the impossible position of having to be a parent to me, her sister. I shall always be grateful for her protection . . .’ Millions have fallen in love with Jennifer Worth and her experiences in the East End as chronicled in Call the Midwife, but little is known about her life outside this period. Now, in this moving and evocative memoir, Jennifer’s sister Christine takes us from their early idyllic years to the cruelty and neglect they suffered after their parents divorced, from Jennifer being forced to leave home at fourteen to their training as nurses. After leaving nursing Jennifer took up a career in music, her first love, and Christine became a sculptor, but through marriages and children, joy and heartbreak, their lives remained intertwined. Absorbing and emotional, The Midwife’s Sister by Christine Lee is testimony to an enduring bond between two extraordinary women.

Download or read book The Midwife s Sister written by CHRISTINE. LEE and published by . This book was released on 2022-02-03 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Our childhood came to an end when our parents parted and from then on Jennifer was placed in the impossible position of having to be a parent to me, her sister. I shall always be grateful for her protection . . .' Millions have fallen in love with Jennifer Worth and her experiences in the East End as chronicled in Call the Midwife, but little is known about her life outside this period. Now, in this moving and evocative memoir, Jennifer's sister Christine takes us from their early idyllic years to the cruelty and neglect they suffered after their parents divorced, from Jennifer being forced to leave home at fourteen to their training as nurses. After leaving nursing Jennifer took up a career in music, her first love, and Christine became a sculptor, but through marriages and children, joy and heartbreak, their lives remained intertwined. Absorbing and emotional, The Midwife's Sister by Christine Lee is testimony to an enduring bond between two extraordinary women.

Download or read book Farewell to the East End written by Jennifer Worth and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The third and final book in the bestselling CALL THE MIDWIFE trilogy, now a major BBC TV series starring Miranda Hart and Jessica Raine. The hit BBC TV series CALL THE MIDWIFE is based on the memoirs of Jennifer Worth, chronicling her life as a midwife in London in the 1950s. FAREWELL TO THE EAST END is the third book in the trilogy. Following on from the bestselling CALL THE MIDWIFE and SHADOWS OF THE WORKHOUSE, Jennifer brings her story to a conclusion. Post-war life could be a struggle - the devastating effects of TB, dangerous backstreet abortions, people driven to extremes by poverty - but there was also warmth and humour. Like Megan'mave, the identical twins who share the same browbeaten husband; the eccentric Sister Monica Joan; and gauche debutante Chummy, who wants to be a missionary. FAREWELL TO THE EAST END shines a light on the lives, culture and stories of a bygone era, and is both moving and heartwarming in equal measure.

Download or read book The Last Midwife written by Sandra Dallas and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2015-09-29 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With Sandra Dallas's incomparable gift for creating a sense of time and place and characters that capture your heart, The Last Midwife tells the story of family, community, and the secrets that can destroy and unite them. It is 1880 and Gracy Brookens is the only midwife in a small Colorado mining town where she has delivered hundreds, maybe thousands, of babies in her lifetime. The women of Swandyke trust and depend on Gracy, and most couldn't imagine getting through pregnancy and labor without her by their sides. But everything changes when a baby is found dead...and the evidence points to Gracy as the murderer. She didn't commit the crime, but clearing her name isn't so easy when her innocence is not quite as simple, either. She knows things, and that's dangerous. Invited into her neighbors' homes during their most intimate and vulnerable times, she can't help what she sees and hears. A woman sometimes says things in the birthing bed, when life and death seem suspended within the same moment. Gracy has always tucked those revelations away, even the confessions that have cast shadows on her heart. With her friends taking sides and a trial looming, Gracy must decide whether it's worth risking everything to prove her innocence. And she knows that her years of discretion may simply demand too high a price now...especially since she's been keeping more than a few dark secrets of her own.

Download or read book Sisters of the East End written by Helen Batten and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-09-26 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heart-warming tales of nursing and midwifery from the Sisters who worked with Jennifer Worth. ‘A second’s silence and then an almighty scream. It was the most moving thing I had ever seen ... A baby, a real live baby, another human life had entered the world. It didn’t seem possible and yet I had witnessed it with my very own eyes.’ Born into a happy working-class North London family in the mid-twentieth century, Katie is determined to ‘do something’ with her life. Working in the impoverished East End in the 1950s, she meets the Sisters of St John the Divine – a community of nuns dedicated to nursing and midwifery. The Sisters have been present at births, cared for the sick and laid out the dead of the East Enders for a hundred years, and Katie soon joins them to start her journey to becoming Sister Catherine Mary. As a nurse and midwife, Katie learns to deal with everything from strokes to breech births. Tragedy is never far away, but there are also moments of pure joy as lives are saved and the Poplar residents rally round. As a young novice Katie rallies against the vow of obedience, yet over the years learns much about the nature of dedication and love. Full of desperate hardship, humour and compassion, Katie’s story brings to life the unique world of these nursing Sisters in London’s East End. Sister Catherine Mary’s story was written by Helen Batten after in-depth interviews with today’s Sisters of the Community of St John the Divine. The Community of St John the Divine was founded in 1848 in a bid to make nursing a respectable profession. Early Sisters worked in the Crimea with Florence Nightingale and were instrumental in developing recognised training and qualifications for nurses and midwives. In the early 20th century they were working in areas such as Poplar and Deptford becoming a treasured part of the community. Today the Sisterhood is based in Birmingham and their website is www.csjd.org.uk. Helen Batten studied history at Cambridge and then journalism at Cardiff University. She went on to become a producer and director at the BBC and now works as a writer and a psychotherapist. She lives in West London with her three daughters.

Download or read book The Midwife written by Tricia Cresswell and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2022-02-17 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A haunting and moving debut, The Midwife by Tricia Cresswell is perfect for fans of The Familiars and The Binding. 1830. After a violent storm, a woman is found alone, naked, near death on the Northumberland moors. She has no memory of who she is or how she got there. But she can remember how to help a woman in labour, how to expertly dress a wound and can speak fluent French. With the odds against her – a penniless single woman – she starts to build her life from scratch, using her skills to help other woman around her. She finds a happy place in the world. Until tragedy strikes, and she must run for her life. In London, Dr Borthwick lives a solitary life working as an accoucheur together with his midwife, Mrs Bates, dealing with mothers and babies in both the elegant homes of high society, and alongside a young widow, Eleanor Johnson, volunteering in the slums of the Devil’s Acre. His professional reputation is spotless and he keeps his private life just as clean, isolating himself from any new acquaintances. He is harbouring a dark secret from his past, one that threatens to spill over everything . . .

Download or read book The Pull of the Stars written by Emma Donoghue and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2020-07-21 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Dublin, 1918, a maternity ward at the height of the Great Flu is a small world of work, risk, death, and unlooked-for love, in "Donoghue's best novel since Room" (Kirkus Reviews). In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city center, where expectant mothers who have come down with the terrible new Flu are quarantined together. Into Julia's regimented world step two outsiders—Doctor Kathleen Lynn, a rumoured Rebel on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney. In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other's lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work. In The Pull of the Stars, Emma Donoghue once again finds the light in the darkness in this new classic of hope and survival against all odds.

Download or read book One Thousand White Women written by Jim Fergus and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on an actual historical event but told through fictional diaries, this is the story of May Dodd—a remarkable woman who, in 1875, travels through the American West to marry the chief of the Cheyenne Nation. One Thousand White Women begins with May Dodd’s journey into an unknown world. Having been committed to an insane asylum by her blue-blood family for the crime of loving a man beneath her station, May finds that her only hope for freedom and redemption is to participate in a secret government program whereby women from “civilized” society become the brides of Cheyenne warriors. What follows is a series of breathtaking adventures—May’s brief, passionate romance with the gallant young army captain John Bourke; her marriage to the great chief Little Wolf; and her conflict of being caught between loving two men and living two completely different lives. “Fergus portrays the perceptions and emotions of women...with tremendous insight and sensitivity.”—Booklist “A superb tale of sorrow, suspense, exultation, and triumph.” —Winston Groom, author of Forrest Gump

Download or read book Educated written by Tara Westover and published by Random House. This book was released on 2018-02-20 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER • One of the most acclaimed books of our time: an unforgettable memoir about a young woman who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University “Extraordinary . . . an act of courage and self-invention.”—The New York Times NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW • ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR • BILL GATES’S HOLIDAY READING LIST • FINALIST: National Book Critics Circle’s Award In Autobiography and John Leonard Prize For Best First Book • PEN/Jean Stein Book Award • Los Angeles Times Book Prize Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home. “Beautiful and propulsive . . . Despite the singularity of [Westover’s] childhood, the questions her book poses are universal: How much of ourselves should we give to those we love? And how much must we betray them to grow up?”—Vogue NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • O: The Oprah Magazine • Time • NPR • Good Morning America • San Francisco Chronicle • The Guardian • The Economist • Financial Times • Newsday • New York Post • theSkimm • Refinery29 • Bloomberg • Self • Real Simple • Town & Country • Bustle • Paste • Publishers Weekly • Library Journal • LibraryReads • Book Riot • Pamela Paul, KQED • New York Public Library