The Birth House

The war finally ends, and Dora’s brothers return home. Albert returns with a wife, Celia, who is from Sydney, Australia. Shortly thereafter, a four-masted schooner sets sail from the shipyards of Scots Bay. The men have been working on her for two years and “some say she’s the last of the great vessels to be built in the Bay” (350). Modern ship designs are rolling in.

That evening, Dora attends a charity pie auction hosted by the White Rose Temperance Society. At the event, women bake pies that are then auctioned at random. The man who wins the pie gets to eat it with the woman who baked it. Dora recalls that her mother and father’s relationship started at such an event.

Hart buys Dora’s pie, and they return to her house together. He stays “[l]ong after his stomach was full and Wrennie had gone to sleep,” and Dora wonders “why he’d never had a wife, and never gotten angry or sour enough to want to leave this place. If anyone had a right and a means to do so, it was Hart” (352). She tries to return the money he lent her when she went to Boston and suggests that he travel outside the Bay. Hart is insulted, thinking Dora wants to be rid of him. As he gets up to leave, Dora apologizes, thanks him, and kisses his cheek.

Hart and Dora spend the night together, and Dora decides that it doesn’t matter “if her ever says he loves me. I know him, have always known him. Same as I know he doesn’t like too much sugar, not in his coffee, not in his women” (353). She knows he hates lies, and she knows that he will be back again the next night to stay with her.

Max writes to Dora to tell her about the molasses flood that sent waves of molasses through the streets of Boston, killing 21 people. Max was walking in the street at the time but was saved by Charlie again. She writes: “I think I may have to marry your brother for this one” (355). She’s also started a business delivering illegal liquor.

Dora writes back to tell her that she has “had a bit of extra happiness these past few months” due to her relationship with Hart. Although he has brought up the idea of marriage, Dora is “content to leave things as they are for now” (357). 

Hart and Dora continue seeing each other and sleeping together, despite the disapproval of Hart’s mother, who Dora believes blames her for Archer’s death (358).

The Occasional Knitters Society, which now includes Precious as a junior member, supports Dora and tries to get gossip from her. At one meeting, Dora gives them all modern bob haircuts to match hers.

Bertine mentions that her sister-in-law Irene is pregnant with her first child and suggests that Dora come stay at Spider Hill until the birth. Dora isn’t sure she wants to go back to midwifing, especially since she hasn’t heard from Dr. Thomas since Ginny’s delivery. His silence is unsettling because “the longer he’s silent, the longer I feel like he’s planning something” (360). However, the women all promise to close ranks and defend her if the doctor tries anything.

A few months later, the Occasional Knitters Society organizes a mothers’ May Day march on the Canning Maternity Home at which Dora will speak. They are protesting because “if women lose the right to say where and how they birth their children, then they will have lost something that’s as dear to life as breathing” (361). Hundreds of women join the march in support of midwives. Some women tell stories about how Dr. Thomas caused the deaths of women and babies by not listening to the midwives. Dora calls for “‘cooperation and trust’ between doctors, midwives and the women they serve” (362).

Not long afterward, Dr. Thomas announces that he will close the Canning Maternity Home since “the need is simply not great enough to support such an endeavor” (363).

Dora decides to transform her house on Spider Hill into “a birthing house for the Bay” (363). She lays out simple rules, including that all women are welcome, none shall pay for her services, and the women shall get nine days of rest at the house after birth (363-64). Happy with her plan, Dora recalls the time when Miss B. read her tea leaves and saw “a pretty little house, right full with babies” (364).

In 1944, 25 years later, Scots Bay finally gets electricity. Dora recalls how the shipyard went out of business after the war. The town grew smaller as “people came and left the Bay, more leaving that staying” (366). However, Dora stays with the others who call the Bay home.

The birth house on Spider Hill is less full than it used to be, but women still come to Dora for “whatever needs doing” (366). Mabel had two more children at the birth house, Bertine had one, and Precious had twins after marrying Sam Gower.

Rachael moved to Scots Bay after Judith left her for a poet a moved to Paris. Wrennie “grew up caring for the women as much as I did” (366). She is 28 and has traveled back and forth to Boston many times. Charlie and Max visit every summer, always bringing gifts for Wrennie.

Hart and Dora are still lovers; they have never married. The Widow Bigelow “scolded and blamed my refusals on my being born different” until her dying day (368). However, Dora refuses more because “I didn’t want to end up like her—having married and lost two husbands, two brothers, two Bigelow men” (368). She thinks Miss B. would have been amused that Dora avoided ending her story in marriage, as Jane Austen always did. Dora plans “to stay just far enough from Hart to keep it all from ending” (368).

That night at dusk, Dora can see the townspeople gathered outside, all waiting to see the electric lights come on in Scots Bay for the first time.

The book ends with “Notes from the Willow Book,” which includes a poem about the many herbs in a midwife’s garden as well as a list of homeopathic remedies and what they treat.