Call the Midwife, Volume 3 - by Jennifer Worth (Paperback)

About the Book

The final book in the acclaimed memoir series--the basis for the acclaimed PBS series: an enduring work of literary nonfiction that combines a heartwarming coming-of-age story and a startling look at women's lives in the poorest section of postwar London.

From the Back Cover

The last book in the trilogy begun by Jennifer Worth's New York Times bestseller and the basis for the PBS series Call the Midwife

When twenty-two-year-old Jennifer Worth, from a comfortable middle-class upbringing, went to work as a midwife in the poorest section of postwar London, she not only delivered hundreds of babies and touched many lives, she also became the neighborhood's most vivid chronicler. Call the Midwife: Farewell to the East End is the last book in Worth's memoir trilogy, which the Times Literary Supplement described as "powerful stories with sweet charm and controlled outrage" in the face of dire circumstances.

Here, at last, is the full story of Chummy's delightful courtship and wedding. We also meet Megan'mave, identical twins who share a browbeaten husband, and return to Sister Monica Joan, who is in top eccentric form. As in Worth's first two books, Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times and Call the Midwife: Shadows of the Workhouse, the vividly portrayed denizens of a postwar East End contend with the trials of extreme poverty--unsanitary conditions, hunger, and disease--and find surprising ways to thrive in their tightly knit community.

A rich portrait of a bygone era of comradeship and midwifery populated by unforgettable characters, Call the Midwife: Farewell to the East End will appeal to readers of Frank McCourt, Katherine Boo, and James Herriot, as well as to the fans of the acclaimed PBS show based on the trilogy.

Review Quotes

"Worth is a vivid writer with a talent for the sting in the tail." - Evening Standard
PRAISE FOR JENNIFER WORTH: "Jennifer Worth's memories of her years as a midwife in the East End were at once hilariously horrible and tremendously moving. She recounts a period when birth was both more frightening and more personal. Part of me wishes that my obstetrician had shown up at my house on a rickety old bicycle, and treated me both to a delivery and a hot cup of tea." - Ayelet Waldman, author of Love and Other Impossible Pursuits
"I loved the people, the nuns, the tough dockers, the prostitutes and pimps, seen with the fresh eyes of youth." - Guardian
"A chilling insight into life for the average mother [in the 1950s]." - Sunday Express
"With deep professional knowledge of midwifery and an unerring eye for the details of life in the London slums of the Nineteen Fifties Jennifer Worth has painted a stunningly vivid picture of an era now passed." - Patrick Taylor, MD, author of the New York Times bestseller An Irish Country Doctor
"Worth gained her midwife training in the 1950s among an Anglican order of nuns dedicated to ensuring safer childbirth for the poor living amid the Docklands slums on the East End of London. Her engaging memoir retraces those early years caring for the indigent and unfortunate during the pinched postwar era in London. . . . Her well-polished anecdotes are teeming with character detail." - Publishers Weekly
"A charming tale of deliveries and deliverance.Worth sketches a warm, amiable portrait of hands-on medical practice. . . . Stocked with charming characters. . . . Worth depicts the rich variety of life in the slums [and] draws back the veil usually placed over the process of birth, described here as both tribulation and triumph." - Kirkus Reviews
"Powerful stories delivered with sweet charm and controlled outrage." - Times Literary Supplement (London)
"Worth is indeed a natural storyteller in the best sense of the term, with apparent artlessness in fact concealing high art--and her detailed account of being a midwife in London's East End is gripping, moving, and convincing from beginning to end. [Call the Midwife] is also a powerful evocation of a long-gone world . . . and in Worth it has surely found one of its best chroniclers." - David Kynaston, Literary Review