Long Lost Midwife

 Long Lost Midwife by Skye Smith is a type of novel that I rarely read. This is a period piece which occurs during the early 1930’s in St. Louis, and the main themes are racism and misogyny. As a result of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave state and even though more than 100 years had passed since then, St. Louis remained a totally segregated state. Former slaves had been freed, but the racial divide was intact. Although African-Americans were hired as employees by whites, any socializing between the races was forbidden. At the same time, in a convention of absolute hypocrisy like the owners of slaves before the Civil War, white men continued to seek black women as sexual partners. That sexual activity resulted in children of mixed races who were often rejected by both blacks and whites.

In St. Louis, there were separate police departments, separate churches, and separate hospitals. The disparity of wealth between most whites and blacks was significant. Although white families had transitioned from having babies at home, blacks continued to depend on midwives to deliver their new babies, and it was just such a situation that led to the main storyline.

Pamela Dorset, a young wealthy white woman was about to give birth to her first child. Although her husband, parents, and in-laws expected her to have the baby in the hospital, as the result of her own anxiety about the delivery, she wanted to have her former nanny, Miss Minnie, present at the time of her birth, and such was not allowed in the all-white hospitals. She did give birth to a healthy boy, but she seemed to have been lost in a severe postpartum depression. Her husband had no understanding of her emotional problems. She had not seen Ms. Minnie in many years, and no one would help her find Miss Minnie. Her desperation increased and her emotional status deteriorated.

It was in the midst of Pamela’s search that Miss Minnie (aka Minerva) was found in her own room with her throat slit. There seemed to be many possible killers, but most notable was Pamela’s father. It was his secret that he had been constantly seeking black women to take to bed. Miss Minnie had been one of his early mistresses. He was desperate to keep that a secret, and given his status as one of the wealthiest men in the city, he certainly had the political power to keep his secret from being discovered and tried.

Because Pamela no longer believed in segregation, and she discovered that it was her father’s love affair with Miss Minnie that led to her own birth (and that of a brother). However, she was caught between her own family’s rejection of her, and she could never gain favor with the very blacks she supported. There was also a story about a little black girl who would mysteriously appear at Pamela’s emotionally critical moments. She was never sure if the girl was real or if she was merely hallucinating the presence of this child.

The book was thought provoking, and it would seem that the multiracial society in the United States, in many ways, has made little progress regarding racisim in the last 200 years since the Missouri Compromise. The author succeeded in portraying the agony of racism and mysogeny for all parties.