About
the Author
Ami McKay's work has aired on CBC radio's Maritime Magazine, This Morning, OutFront, and The Sunday Edition. Her documentary, Daughter of Family G, won an Excellence in Journalism Meallion at the 2003 Atlantic Journalism Awarsd. When she moved with her family to Scots Bay, Nova Scotia, she learned that their new home was once known as the birth house.
The Birth House was published in the New Face of Fiction program in 2006.
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The Book
Now available in trade
paperback from Vintage
Canada
The Birth House is the story of Dora Rare, the first female to be born in five generations of Rares. As a child in a small villiage in Nova Scotia, she is befriended by Miss Babineau, an outspoken Acadian midwife with a talent for telling tales and a kitchen filled with herbs and folk remedies. Dora becomes her apprentice at the outset of World War I. Together they help the women of Scots Bay through infertility, difficult labour, breech births, unwanted pregnancies and even unfulfilling marriages.
When Gilbert Thomas, a brash medical doctor comes to Scots Bay with promises of sterile, painless childbirth, some of the women begin to question Miss Babineau's methods. After her death, Dr. Thomas doubles his efforts to eliminate midwivery in the area. He sets out to undermine Dora's credibility by blaming her for the death of Mrs. Experience Ketch, a woman who had once sought Dora's care. Gossip follows, the women begin to take sides, and Dora must sommon all her strength to protect the birthing traditions and women's wisdom of her community.
Filled with details that are as interesting as the are surprising - childbirth in the aftermath of the Halifax Explosion, the use of vibrators to cure hysteria, the Voice of the Moon, and a mysterious elixir called Beaver Brew - Ami McKay has created an unforgettabletale of the struggles women faced to have control of their own bodies, and in keeping the best parts of tradition alive in the world of modern medicine.
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Book Reviews and Quotes
Praise for The Birth House:
"Fresh as a loaf of homemade bread just out of the oven, The Birth House, a tale of sex, birth, love and pain will more than satisfy the hungry reader."
-Joan Clark, author of An Audience of Chairs
"The moon over Nova Scotia must have extra magic in it to have fostered a writer of Ami McKay's lyrical sway and grace. She retrieves our social history and lays it out before us in a collage of vivid, compelling detail. In McKay's depiction of Dora Rare, an early twentieth century midwife, attention is paid to the day-to-day moments of love and tending that enable humans to endure. And we the readers get to witness the emergence of a powerful new voice in Canadian writing."
-Marjorie Anderson, co-editor of Dropped Threads I and II
"Ami McKay is a marvellous storyteller who writes with a haunting and evocative voice. The novel offers a world of mystery and wisdom, a world where tradition collides with science, where life and death meet under the moon. With a startling sense of time and place The Birth House travels through a landscape that is at once deeply tender and exquisitely harsh. McKay is possessed with a brilliant narrative gift."
-Christy Ann Conlin, author of Heave
"Reading Ami McKay's first novel is like rummaging through a sea-chest found in a Nova Scotian attic. Steeped in lore and landscape, peppered with journal entries, newspaper clippings and advertisements, this marvellous 'literary scrapbook' captures the harsh realities of the seacoast community of Scots Bay, Nova Scotia during WWI. With meticulous detail and visceral description, McKay weaves a compelling story of a woman who fights to preserve the art of midwifery, reminding us of the need, in changing times, for acts of bravery, kindness, and clear-sightedness."
-Beth Powning, author of The Hatbox Letters
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Excerpt
Prologue
My house stands at the edge of the earth. Together,
the house and I have held strong against the churning
tides of Fundy. Two sisters, stubborn in our bones.
My father, Judah Rare, built this farmhouse in 1917.
It was my wedding gift. A strong house for a Rare
woman, he said. I was eighteen. He and his five
brothers, shipbuilders by trade, raised her worthy
from timbers born on my grandfather's land.
Oak for stability and certainty, yellow birch for new
life and change, spruce for protection from the world
outside. Father was an intuitive carpenter, carrying
out his work like holy ritual. His callused hands,
veined with pride, had a memory for measure and a knowing
of what it takes to withstand the sea.
Strength and a sense of knowing, that's what
you have to have to live in the Bay. Each morning you
set your sights on the tasks ahead and hope that when
the day is done you're farther along than when
you started. Our little village, perched on the crook
of God's finger, has always been ruled by storm
and season. The men did whatever they had to do to
get by. They joked with one another in fire-warmed
kitchens after sunset, smoking their pipes, someone
bringing out a fiddle . . . laughing as they chorused, no
matter how rough, we can take it. The seasons
were reflected in their faces, and in the movement
of their bodies. When it was time for the shad, herring
and cod to come in, they were fishermen, dark with
tiresome wet from the sea. When the deer began to huddle
on the back of the mountain, they became hunters and
woodsmen. When spring came, they worked the green-scented
earth, planting crops that would keep, potatoes, cabbage,
carrots, turnips. Summer saw their weathered hands
building ships and haying fields, and sunsets that
ribboned over the water, daring the skies to turn night.
The long days were filled with pride and ceremony as
mighty sailing ships were launched from the shore. The
Lauretta, The Reward, The Nordica, The Bluebird, The
Huntley. My father said he'd scour two hundred
acres of forest just to find the perfect trees to build
a three-masted schooner. Tall yellow birch, gently
arched by northwesterly winds, was highly prized. He
could spot the keel in a tree's curve and shadow,
the return of the tide set in the grain.
Men wagered their lives with the sea for the honour
of these vessels. Each morning they watched for the
signs. Red skies in morning, sailors take warning.
Each night they looked to the heavens, spotting starry
creatures, or the point of a dragon's tail. They
told themselves that these were promises from God,
that He would keep the wiry cold fingers of the sea
from grabbing at them, from taking their lives. Sometimes
men were taken. On those dark days the men who were
left behind sat down together and made conversation
of every detail, hitching truth to wives' tales
while mending their nets.
As the men bargained with the elements, the women tended
to matters at home. They bartered with each other to
fill their pantries and clothe their children. Grandmothers,
aunts and sisters taught one another to stitch and
cook and spin. On Sunday mornings mothers bent their
knees between the stalwart pews at the Union Church,
praying they would have enough. With hymnals clutched
against their breasts, they told the Lord they would
be ever faithful if their husbands were spared.
When husbands, fathers and sons were kept out in the
fog longer than was safe, the women stood at their
windows, holding their lamps, a chorus of lady moons
beckoning their lovers back to shore. Waiting, they
hushed their children to sleep and listened for the
voice of the moon in the crashing waves. In the secret
of the night, mothers whispered to their daughters
that only the moon could force the waters to submit.
It was the moon's voice that called the men home,
her voice that turned the tides of womanhood, her voice
that pulled their babies into the light of birth.
My house became the birth house. That's what
the women came to call it, knocking on the door, ripe
with child, water breaking on the porch. First-time
mothers full of questions, young girls in trouble and
seasoned women with a brood already at home. (I called
those babies "toesies," because they were
more than their mamas could count on their fingers.)
They all came to the house, wailing and keening their
babies into the world. I wiped their feverish necks
with cool, moist cloths, spooned porridge and hot tea
into their tired bodies, talked them back from outside
of themselves.
Ginny, she had two . . .
Sadie Loomer, she had a girl here.
Precious, she had twins . . . twice.
Celia had six boys, but she was married to my brother
Albert . . . Rare men always have boys.
Iris Rose, she had Wrennie . . .
All I ever wanted was to keep them safe.
Part One
Around the year 1760, a ship of Scotch immigrants
came to be wrecked on the shores of this place. Although
the vessel was lost, her passengers and crew managed
to find shelter here. They struggled through the winter - many
taking ill, the women losing their children, the men
making the difficult journey down North Mountain to
the valley below, carrying sacks of potatoes and other
goods back to their temporary home, now called Scots
Bay.
In the spring, when all who had been stranded chose
to make their way to more established communities,
the daughter of the ship's captain, Annie MacIssac,
stayed behind. She had fallen in love with a Mi'kmaq
man she called Silent Rare.
On the evening of a full moon in June, Silent went
out in his canoe to catch the shad that were spawning
around the tip of Cape Split. As the night wore on,
Annie began to worry that some ill had befallen her
love. She looked across the water for signs of him
but found nothing. She walked to the cove where they
had first met and began to call out to him, promising
her heart, her fidelity and a thousand sons to his
name. The moon, seeing Annie's sadness, began
to sing, forcing the waves inland, strong and fast,
bringing Silent safely back to his lover.
Since that time, every child born from the Rare name
has been male, and even now, when the moon is full,
you can hear her voice, the voice of the moon, singing
the sailors home.
-A Rare Family History, 1850
1
Ever since I can remember, people have had more than
enough to say about me. As the only daughter in five
generations of Rares, most figure I was changed by
faeries or not my father's child. Mother works
and prays too hard to have anyone but those with the
cruellest of tongues doubt her devotion to my father.
When there's no good explanation for something,
people of the Bay find it easier to believe in mermaids
and moss babies, to call it witchery and be done with
it. Long after the New England Planters' seed
wore the Mi'kmaq out of my family's blood,
I was born with coal black hair, cinnamon skin and
a caul over my face. A foretelling. A sign.
A gift that supposedly allows me to talk to animals,
see people's deaths and hear the whisperings
of spirits. A charm for protection against drowning.
When one of Laird Jessup's Highland heifers gave
birth to a three-legged albino calf, talk followed
and people tried to guess what could have made such
a creature. In the end, most people blamed me for it.
I had witnessed the cow bawling her calf onto the ground.
I had been the one who ran to the Jessups' to
tell the young farmer about the strange thing that
had happened. Dora talked to ghosts, Dora ate bat
soup, Dora slit the Devil's throat and flew over
the chicken coop. My classmates chanted that verse
between the slats of the garden gate, along with all
the other words their parents taught them not to say.
Of course, there are plenty of schoolyard stories about
Miss B. too, most of them ending with, if your
cat or your baby goes missing, you'll know where
to find the bones. It's talk like that that's
made us such good friends. Miss B. says she's
glad for gossip. "It keep folks from comin' to
places they don't belong."
Most days I wake up and say a prayer. I want, I
wish, I wait for something to happen to me. While
I thank God for all good things, I don't say
this verse to Him, or to Jesus or even to Mary. They
are far too busy to be worrying about the affairs and
wishes of my heart. No, I say my prayer more to the
air than anything else, hoping it might catch on the
wind and find its way to anything, to something that's
mine. Mother says, a young lady should take care
with what she wishes for. I'm beginning
to think she's right.
Excerpted from The Birth House by
Ami McKay Copyright © 2006
by Ami McKay. Excerpted by permission of Knopf Canada,
a division of Random House of Canada Limited. All rights
reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or
reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Links
to Extra Resources
Visit Amy McKay's Website
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