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Today's book recommendation for Women's History Month is "A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812" by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (1989).

Martha Ballard was an ordinary woman who lived on the Maine frontier in the first decades after the American Revolution. She delivered 816 babies, often travelling through snow and across rivers to reach her patients. She also helped her husband support their family with her textile work and various other enterprises, including supporting herself for a year when her husband was imprisoned for debt. She might have remained unknown to history, but for the fact that she kept a diary which survived.

The diary's short factual entries detail Ballard's work as a midwife, her spinning and weaving, gardening, and various business enterprises. Out of these terse entries, historian Ulrich assembles a fascinating social history of a woman's life in the late 18th and early 19th century.

Each chapter of the book begins with an excerpt from Ballard's diary, and then fleshes out that excerpt with the social and economic background that places it in context. The topics covered range from midwifery and medicine, to religion, to marriage, to the legal system. The role of women is central to the story, tying together these various threads.

This book won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1990.

Link to book:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/181591/a-midwifes-tale-by-laurel-thatcher-ulrich/