A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812

“Laurel, who taught at New Hampshire and then at Harvard, wrote this brilliant picture of rural New England life, set from the 1780s to the 1820 or so based on the diary of a midwife named Martha Ballard. It took virtuosic interpretive work to tease meaning out of the cryptic writings in this diary. She managed to assemble coastal Maine was like in this time period. You get a stunning portrait of what it was like to live in that time and place.” Read more...

The best books on New England

Mark Peterson, Historian