Nonfiction Review: A Midwife's Tale by laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Title: A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812

Author: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Year published: 1990

Category: Adult nonfiction

Pages: 444 pages (including notes, index, etc)

Rating: 4 out of 5

Location: (my 2025 Google Reading map): USA (ME)

Summary: Drawing on the diaries of one woman in 18th-century Maine, this intimate history illuminates the medical practices, household economies, religious rivalries, and sexual mores of the New England frontier.

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.

Review: I really enjoyed reading The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon (link to my review), so when I learned that there was a nonfiction book containing the real diary and more of the story behind the fictionalized version in Frozen River, I was excited. I bought a copy and have held onto it to read during Nonfiction November.

Well. This was a slog for me, and I ended up skimming much of it. I feel bad about that. It is so well researched, and the story of Martha Ballard is fascinating. But the detail was just too much for me. Maybe because I had already read the novel, so I felt I knew the story? I'm not sure.

There are so many amazing things about this book, the novel, and Martha. She kept a daily diary for decades, giving us insight into the lives of women, towns, births, illnesses, and deaths. She gave us the history of a town at a time when few records were kept at all, and certainly none of women.

I liked that each chapter had a theme (illlness, fabric, a court case, etc), but almost the most interesting for me was the epilogue when the author explains the journey of Martha's diary after her death. It's amazing that her family preserved it, passed it on to the next generation, and eventually to the Maine State Library.

Challenges for which this counts: