Page Fifty-One

The Midwife of Venice by Roberta Rich

The novel opens with a description of sixteenth-century Venice that sets the mood for the entire text: "At midnight, the dogs, cats, and rats rule Venice. The Ponte di Ghetto Nuovo, the bridge that leads to the ghetto, trembles under the weight of sacks of rotting vegetables, rancid fat, and vermin. [. . .] It was on such a night that the men came for Hannah." What these men come for is Hannah's help in delivering a baby for a wealthy Christian family. The problem is that Hannah is Jewish, and it is not only illegal for Jews to administer medical treatment to Christians, but Hannah's method she uses as a midwife may cause the Inquisition to deem her a witch. The text follows Hannah's encounter with the Conte and his wife, a sickly and frail woman who has had much difficulty producing an heir for her husband, and intersects her story with the story of her husband, Isaac, who has been captured as a slave on the island of Malta and is in need of ransom to buy his freedom and passage back to Venice.

Rich's storytelling is quite vivid in its description and suspenseful in the many hardships Hannah and Isaac face in their separate journeys to reconnect with one another. I would not say this book is amazing, but it was a satisfying read.