A Midwife's Journey

It is 1894 and diphtheria has ravaged the Russian colony of Molotschna (present day Ukraine). Margaretha Rahn has just buried three of her four children when her husband Abraham decides they must emigrate to the United States.

Abraham has been a successful farmer, and, unlike most emigrants, they leave Russia with the financial resources to buy a home and farmland in an established Mennonite community in Minnesota. But in little more than three years, restless Abraham decides he must take advantage of the free land available for homesteading in North Dakota.

This is the familiar story of women who leave home and family to face the rigors and deprivations of life homesteading on the prairie. What is different is that Margaretha Rahn is a hebamme (midwife), and comes from a tradition wherein midwives are formally trained and considered blessed by God.

Margaretha delivers babies and sometimes helps prevent pregnancies, using her midwifery and healing skills in snowstorms and fires, in the bitter cold of long winters, and in the promises of spring, but not always with the approval of her church community.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Jackpine Writers' Bloc, Inc.
Published: 06/04/2026
ISBN: 9781928690658
Pages: 250
Weight: 0.75lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.53d