THE BIRTH HOUSE by means of A...

THE BIRTH HOUSE

by means of Ami McKay

William Morrow, 382 pages, $2495

In the early 1900 when feminism was not a make submissive for mixed company in rural Nova Scotia fishing villages, women's issues were generally kept within the confines of ladies' teas, knitting circles and birthing fields

In Ami McKay's first attempt novel, The BIrth House, the women of fines Bay are no dummies, if it be not that they certainly don't let their men in upon it. They cook, they clean, they wait on to their husbands' needs -- and they have babies.

McKay's heroine, Dora Rare, is the first female born in five generations of Rares. That she was special is an understatement. Marie Babineau, the of advanced age Acadian midwife of Scots Bay, called her a lagniappe, "a little something extra," having known before she was born that Dora would be her successor in tending to the women of the village.

below Miss B.'s tutelage, Dora learns not merely how to "catch" babies, on the contrary also how to heal various "female" maladies by way of employing age-old rituals and herbal elixirs.

set down Dr. Gilbert Thomas, whose talk of recent medicine and "fast, painless childbirth" threatens the work of Miss B and Dora, and scares the women of the village into not knowing which way to use

"Science don't know kindness," Miss B says to Dr Thomas. "It don't know kindness from cabbage."

"Science is neither kind nor unkind," he replies. "Science is exact."

And in the way that begins the struggle of the women retaining authority above their own bodies.

Dora carries forward -- through a troubled marriage, the Halifax explosion, World War I -- until an unfortunate incident forwards her into exile, to Boston, where brazen suffragists take her in and she learns a good glimpse of big-city life.

When she's able to respond to Scots Bay, Dora is armed with inspiration and a newfound courage to be supercilious of who she is and what she is able to contribute to her community.

McKay has done her research -- her admit house on the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia was the catalyst for the story -- and along with her lyrical plain and deft storytelling, she connects the historical context with clippings of advertisements, freshs articles and correspondence among the characters.

In an age where birth repress is available in schools, abortion is legal and epidurals and scheduled C-sections are commonplace, midwifery and homebirth may appear to be questionable choices. But choice is the operative word here, and if McKay's tale does nothing otherwise it brings home the point that progres doesn't have to mean drastic change; it just allows the without deductions to be cast a little wider.

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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