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Biography

JB: How did your daughter Grace influence the choices you made about the character of Connie, Sibyl's daughter, in Midwives?

Bohjalian: My daughter is three-and-a half now, but it was while rocking her to sleep one night when she just about to turn one that I realized Midwives should be narrated by a woman - the midwife's daughter. A friend of mine had told me that day that her goddaughter had recently come home from preschool entranced by the word "vulva." This little girl knew "vulva" wasn't a bad word, and that she could say it all that she wanted. But it was also a word that she understood made her parents sweat bullets, especially when she'd use it casually in conversation. And so, I was rocking my little Grace that night in my arms, the sentence formed in my mind that would become the first sentence of the first chapter of Midwives: "I used the word vulva as a child the way some kids said butt or penis or puke. It wasn't a swear exactly, but I knew it had an edge to it that could stop adults cold in their tracks." I'm sure Connie is, in some ways, the sort of young woman I hope Grace will eventually become; independent and loving and incredibly strong - capable of protecting the people she loves, and appreciating life's astonishing moral ambiguities.

JB: Sibyl's notebooks figure very prominently into the plot of Midwives, but also give us remarkable insight into Sibyl even while her story is narrated by her daughter Connie. How did this remarkably effective framework take shape during the writing of the book?

Bohjalian: Midwives is my fifth novel, but it represents the first time I fell deeply in love with a fictional character in the midst of writing one of my books - that character being, of course, midwife Sibyl Danforth. I love Sibyl a lot. But, I felt the story had to remain narrated by Connie for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the daughter's ironic detachment from the world of midwifery, and the midwife's nightmarish experience that form the core of the novel. At the same time, I wanted to be inside Sibyl's head - both as a person because I cared for her so much, and as a writer because I wanted readers to know some of what Sibyl was thinking and experiencing and feeling. And so, I decided to include some of her diary entries. And then I decided to include some more. And then, finally, I decided they would open every single chapter, beginning with Chapter 2.

JB: What is the most important thing for your readers to know about this piece of work?

Bohjalian: I don't view Midwives as an "issue" novel. I have no agenda for or against home birth, though I do have a massive amount of respect and affection for midwives and nurse-midwives, and the midwifery model for birth.

JB: Imagine, if you will, that you are a bookseller. As you recommend Midwives to a customer, what do you say about this book? Now, the customer has read Midwives, loves it, and comes back for more Chris Bohjalian. What might my experience as a reader be with Water Witches or Past the Bleachers?

Bohjalian: Midwives is a love story of sorts. It's the story of one daughter's desperate love for her mother, and one mother's equally desperate love for her daughter. Certainly lots of reviewers and booksellers have praised the book as a thriller and a page-turner (albeit, thank you very much, a "literate" one), and many have written about the way they couldn't put it down. But Midwives remains for me the tale of the unbreakable bonds that exist for a variety of reasons between Sibyl and Connie Danforth. That means it shares a great deal with Water Witches and Past the Bleachers. Like those two earlier novels of mine, it's about the sorts of happy families we see everyday on the street, who are suddenly thrown into crucibles that are not of their own making. How do these families circle the wagons and try and survive - and keep the bonds between parents and children (and husbands and wives) intact?

JB: How did you come to be interested in the subject of midwifery?

Bohjalian: About six months after my daughter was born, my wife and I were at a dinner party and I realized I was sitting next to a lay (or independent) midwife. She started to tease me very good-naturedly about the fact that my wife and I had had a very traditional ob-attended hospital birth, adding, "If you'd used me, you could have had your baby at home, and you wouldn't have had to travel 34 miles in the hospital in the middle of the night. And, you could have caught your little girl yourself!" That was the first time I'd ever heard the term "catching a baby," and I grew interested fast. And as I got to know this talented and charismatic midwife, I learned that she had attended between 650 and 700 births, which meant she had seen between 650 and 700 sobbing men. I began to realize that she was a part of a profession in which everyone saw their work as a calling (not merely a job), and there was a tremendous amount of beauty and drama every single day.

JB: Very few men can write about women's relationships with other women in a way that rights true, yet Sibyl's support system of other midwives provides some of the best characterizations and dialogue in the book. Where or how was this "tuning fork" forged which allows you to strike just the right note for Sibyl, Cheryl, Anne Austin and the others?

Bohjalian: I interviewed over 65 people while researching Midwives, including (of course) a great many midwives, nurse-midwives, and parents who'd had their children at home. That research was instrumental in all the "birth" stories in the book, and in the development of the characters and their language.

JB: What's next for you?