![]() ![]() ![]() With a baby at the center of the tale, The Midwife of Venice is as fast-paced as any thriller, the childbirth scene as gripping as any battle story. "At a recent confinement, she had exerted too much pressure and had crushed the skull of the baby instead of easing it out." But the nobleman is desperate and will pay her price, a sum high enough to ransom her husband away from the Knights of Malta. Indeed, she has a dangerous secret for which she could be accused of witchcraft: "her birthing spoons, two silver ladles hinged together." The spoons can save lives, but they can kill, too. But the nobleman has heard Hannah is a wonder worker. Jewish midwives are forbidden to deliver Christian babies. When a Christian nobleman comes to her house by dark of night and begs her to assist his wife, Hannah knows she must turn him down or risk torture for breaking the law. She had not washed the blanket since Isaac had departed for the Levant to trade spices." "He had been fond of eating oranges in bed, feeding her sections as they chatted. Hannah Levi sorely misses her merchant husband, a captive in Malta after mercenaries attack his trading ship. The Midwife of Venice is an imaginative, suspenseful tale about a sixteenth-century Jewish midwife from Venice's Ghetto Nuovo. ![]()
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