The Forgotten Midwife

Set in the dual timelines of present-day New Jersey and 1950s Ireland, and based on real historical events, comes a powerful, poignant novel of sisterhood, family secrets, and resilience from the author of the “profound, moving, and memorable” (Fresh Fiction) The Women on Platform Two. New Jersey, 2023. Riley Carmichael is getting married and finally joining a huge, loving family, but she can’t help but feel the emptiness of her own side of the church. For most of Riley’s life, it’s been just her and her grandmother, Betty, but as late-stage dementia overtakes her grandmother’s mind, Riley knows she’s losing her, too. On one of Riley’s visits to Betty’s nursing home, she encounters her grandmother in one of her increasingly rare moments of lucidity, and Betty desperately shares with Riley a tatty birth certificate for an unknown baby born in Ireland in the 1950s. Full of questions about her heritage, Riley embarks on a trip to Ireland to find that elusive sense of home, identity, and belonging. Tipperary, Ireland, 1954. Margaret Lannigan’s life is made up of weekly dances and time spent with the love of her life, Joseph.