“Please don’t get sick.” She mouthed the words silently as she adjusted the wick to keep the flame low. She hated cleaning up after him when he got sick. From the sour smell of alcohol creeping back into the bedroom toward her, she guessed he might have already been sick before he came inside.
She looked back at Evie as she stood up. Evie looked just as Kate had imagined her moments earlier, but she didn’t fool Kate. She was awake. Her eyes were shut too tight, and Kate couldn’t be positive in the dim light, but she thought she saw a tear on her cheek. “No sense crying now, Evie. Daddy’s home,” Kate whispered softly.
Evie kept pretending to be asleep, but tears were definitely sliding out of the corners of her eyes. Kate sighed as she turned away from the bed. “Go on back to sleep, Evie. I’ll take care of him.”
Kate carried her lamp toward the front room where her father was tripping over the rocking chair. She wondered if her mother was lying in her bed pretending to sleep and if she had tears on her cheeks. She wouldn’t get up. Not even if Daddy fell flat on his face in the middle of the floor. She couldn’t. Not and keep cooking him breakfast when daylight came. Kate knew that. She didn’t know how she knew it, but she did.
Frontier Nursing Service Readers’ Note
Born into an influential Kentucky family, Mary Breckinridge had a privileged childhood, but after the deaths of her two young children, she devoted her life to improving the health of women and children. A registered nurse, she went to France during World War I, where she met British nurse-midwives and decided a nurse-midwifery program would be the best way to bring better healthcare to rural areas. Perhaps due to having family roots in Kentucky, Breckinridge looked to the eastern Kentucky Appalachian area to start her nurse-midwife program. She went on horseback through the mountains, seeking out every “granny midwife” and talking with the people to understand their needs. In 1925, she established the Frontier Nursing Service in Leslie County, Kentucky.
She recruited the first midwives from England, where she received her own midwifery training. Since American physicians discouraged the use of midwives during that time period, there were few formally trained American midwives. When England became embroiled in World War II in 1939, several of those British midwives felt compelled to go home and use their nursing skills serving their country. The resulting shortage of midwives in the Frontier Nursing Service led Breckinridge to establish a midwifery school in 1939 at the small Hyden Hospital she’d helped the community build in 1928.
Mary Breckinridge traveled all over the country speaking about the frontier nurses, procuring millions of dollars in donations and recruiting nurses and volunteers called couriers. These couriers, mostly young women from socially prominent families, took care of the horses, ran errands, and assisted the nurse-midwives. The nurses traveled by horseback or on foot to provide in-home prenatal and childbirth care, functioning as both midwives and family nurses. The service’s low fees could be paid in money or goods and no one was turned away. Maternal and infant mortality rates decreased dramatically in the area.
Breckinridge ran the Frontier Nursing Service until her death in 1965, but the FNS she established still serves southeastern Kentucky and the FNS School of Midwifery and Family Nursing continues to train nurse-midwives. Wendover, the headquarters and home of Mary Breckinridge, was selected as a National Historic Landmark in 1991. For more information, you can read Mary Breckinridge’s own story, Wide Neighborhoods: A Story of the Frontier Nursing Service.
Acknowledgments
The Frontier Nursing Service has a saying that nobody comes to the Service by accident. I think that might be true with writers too. We don’t come to stories by accident. A writer is pulled to a story by some spark of an idea. For me that spark was learning about the nurse-midwives in the Frontier Nursing Service. Reading their first-person accounts allowed me to vicariously experience their adventures of riding Appalachian Mountain trails, fording rivers, and delivering babies in log cabins, and then let my characters have some of those same adventures.
I’m thankful for the opportunity to write this story. I appreciate my agent, Wendy Lawton, who was excited when I proposed the idea of writing about a midwife in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky. Her enthusiasm for the story helped me keep pushing through when the writing got hard.
I’m so blessed to work with a wonderful editor, Lonnie Hull DuPont, who is always ready with encouraging words and ways to improve my stories. Barb Barnes has made me a better writer with her careful editing. I appreciate the ready help available from Michele Misiak and Karen Steele with publicity, reviews, and more. Cheryl Van Andel and her team never fail to design eye-catching covers for every story. The whole Revell team works to make my books be the best they can be and then find their way out to you, the readers.
I especially thank you, the readers, for picking up my books and letting my stories come to life in your imagination. Thank you for reading and for your friendship and prayers. I’m blessed beyond measure by you and by my loving family. Most of all, I thank the Lord for opening the door to let me write stories of faith, love, and life.
Ann H. Gabhart is the bestselling author of many novels, including Angel Sister, Small Town Girl, and Love Comes Home, several Shaker novels such as The Outsider, The Believer, and The Innocent, and THE HEART OF HOLLYHILL series. As A. H. Gabhart, she is the author of THE HIDDEN SPRINGS MYSTERIES series. Ann’s country roots go deep, and she and her husband still live on a Kentucky farm just over the hill from where she was born in a farmhouse built around a log cabin. Learn more at www.annhgabhart.com.
Books by Ann H. Gabhart
The Outsider
The Believer
The Seeker
The Blessed
The Gifted
The Innocent
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Words Spoken True
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Angel Sister
Small Town Girl
Love Comes Home
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Christmas at Harmony Hill
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THE HEART OF HOLLYHILL
Scent of Lilacs
Orchard of Hope
Summer of Joy
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These Healing Hills
Books by A. H. Gabhart
Murder at the Courthouse
Murder Comes by Mail
Murder Is No Accident
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