Review: The Secrets of Midwives

by Sally Hepworth

(Macmillan, $29.99)

When you are pregnant, your world seems to revolve around all things and all people maternal. Perhaps that is why Melbourne author Sally Hepworth chose to write a novel about midwives when she was pregnant herself.

Hepworth intertwines the secrets of three generations of women into this book - each with a secret they fear will upend their world if it gets out.

Neva Bradley, like her mother and grandmother, is a midwife - a pregnant midwife who has kept her pregnancy a secret for as long as her growing belly would allow.

Her mother Grace, when she finds out, cannot understand why her daughter won’t tell her who the father is.

Grace is determined to find out for herself, even as her own career and her relationship with her husband start to crumble.

But it is Neva’s grandmother and Grace’s mother, Floss, who harbours the most shocking secret of all.

Neva’s pregnancy brings back memories for Floss that she has kept hidden for more than 60 years. Revealing them will change the lives of everyone she loves.

If you are a fan of Call The Midwife, One Born Every Minute and the like, then you will enjoy what Hepworth has delivered here.

- Angela Carey

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