Historical Fiction | Race & Identity | Women’s Stories | 1930s
America
Date Published: September 19, 2025
Publisher: MindStir Media
Midwife is a gripping historical novel about identity, obsession, and the
dangerous cost of defying social order.
Pamela appears to be a privileged young white socialite, newly married and
expecting her first child. But beneath the polished surface lies a restless,
unsettled woman struggling against the suffocating expectations placed upon
her. As her pregnancy advances, Pamela becomes fixated on one thing: finding
Miss Minnie, the Black midwife who delivered her at home in 1911.
Her request ignites fierce resistance. Both families condemn the idea, and
Pamela’s husband, Frank, fearing scandal and loss of control, tightens
his grip—bringing in relatives to monitor her movements and even hiring
surveillance to ensure she never makes contact with the midwife. Determined
and increasingly reckless, Pamela secretly pressures her Black maid to help
locate Miss Minnie, setting in motion a chain of events neither family can
contain.
What begins as a quiet domestic drama escalates into a volatile confrontation
with race, power, and truth. As long-buried histories surface, the search for
a midwife becomes a catalyst for racial tension, betrayal, and
violence—raising the chilling question: will this birth end in
life… or murder?
Long Lost Midwife starts with measured restraint and builds relentlessly
toward a tempestuous, unforgettable conclusion. It is a haunting exploration
of white blindness, Black resilience, and the fragile illusions that sustain
privilege in early 20th-century America.
â—Ź Thought-provoking historical fiction
â—Ź Novels examining race, class, and gender
â—Ź Character-driven stories set in pre-Civil Rights America
â—Ź Books that begin quietly and end with devastating force
designer whose career spanned decades of designing complex machinery using
advanced computer-aided design (CAD) systems. That background in precision and
structure deeply informs Smith’s approach to storytelling—where
narrative architecture, historical accuracy, and character motivation are
carefully engineered.
During the final ten years of a professional career, Smith moderated the
Plymouth Writers Group, a MeetUp-based genre writing collective composed of
engineers, doctors, legal professionals, technical writers, and MFA graduates.
Within this collaborative environment, Smith completed first drafts of three
novels, with two additional works developed independently.
Smith holds a degree in History from St. John’s University in
Collegeville, Minnesota, an academic foundation that profoundly shapes the
thematic and contextual grounding of the work. Historical setting, for Smith,
is never decorative—it is the backbone of character behavior and moral
conflict.
Another significant creative influence comes from many years singing in
Sonomento, a Minneapolis-based operatic choir active until 2024. Immersion in
opera introduced Smith to the disciplined exactness of musical phrasing and
libretto, where text is fluid, expressive, and shaped by emotional register.
That sense of linguistic “plasticity” carries directly into
Smith’s prose style.
Long Lost Midwife reflects these influences in a novel that begins with
restraint and builds toward controlled chaos—examining race, power, and
identity in 1930s America with precision, tension, and historical depth.
