What happens when a person discovers that he or she may
have accidentally killed someone?  How does a person make
peace with him or herself in such a situation?  Can he or
she ever admit to such a mistake?

While these questions may be unresolvable, Christopher Bohjalian
raises them all and provides some interesting answers in his latest
book, MIDWIVES.

Sibyl Danforth is a midwife in a small town in
Vermont.  Her patient, Charlotte Bedford, goes into labor
one night, and seemingly suffers a stroke and
dies.  Prevented by a snowstorm from getting her patient
to a hospital, Sibyl performs an emergency Caesarian section to
save the baby.

But was Charlotte really dead?  Sibyl is certain she was;
even after several rounds of CPR, she was unable to rouse Charlotte
or detect a pulse.  The medical examiner says no; he
believes that Sibyl died as a result of the surgery Sibyl
performed.  After an investigation, Sibyl is charged with
involuntary manslaughter and eventually brought to trial.

With meticulous detail, Christopher Bohjalian examines the trial
from the perspective of Connie, Sibyl's fourteen-year-old
daughter.  While she never really doubts her mother's
innocence, she comes to understand that her mother may well be
convicted, and this realization forces her to change her
perspective about a number of issues.

The book is filled with moral ambiguity, questions about medical
ethics and law, and is perceptive in its portrayal of a family in
crisis.  If the questions that it raises are disturbing,
the answers are no less so, and once you turn the last page --- and
you have to turn the last page to find out what happened --- you
will find yourself thinking about the issues Bohjalian raises for a
long while.