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‌An Introduction‌

The Midwife's Apprentice

The Midwife’s Apprentice: the title was in my head for a long time. I liked it, speaking as it did of birth and learning, but I didn’t know what the story was about. The title was all I had. I wrote it on a card, put it in a folder marked “The Midwife’s Apprentice,” and filed it away, but I had no words to accompany it, and I despaired: Would it forever be an empty folder?

Would I never know what I wanted to say? I sat at the computer and stared at the blank page. And then one day I saw an image of a homeless child sleeping on a dung heap, longing for a name, a full belly, and a place in the world, and the words flowed from my fingers. I finished a draft in record

time and sent it to my editor, Dinah Stevenson, with a note saying, “I don’t know if this is a novel or a writing exercise.” Dinah thought it was indeed a novel, and The Midwife’s Apprentice was published by Clarion Books in 1995.

Alyce, the midwife’s apprentice, is alone and unsure but also courageous, compassionate, and resilient—a determined young woman in medieval England who finds her way in a world that’s often brutal. But she is not feisty and outgoing like Birdy in Catherine, Called Birdy, and people love Birdy. Alyce is like the younger sister of the prom queen—would people

appreciate her quieter charms?

I needn’t have worried. The Midwife’s Apprentice won the Newbery Medal in 1996, and my life has never been the same.

My husband once suggested that my third book, The Ballad of Lucy Whipple, told my own story of moving to California when I was ten.

Matilda Bone; The Loud Silence of Francine Green; Rodzina, about a Polish girl from Chicago, like me; and Alchemy and Meggy Swann, with

Meggy’s wabbling and pain, are all my own stories. I cannot seem to write a book that isn’t in some way about me. I told this to a group of seventh-

graders while we were discussing The Midwife’s Apprentice, and one boy, his grin full of glee, asked, “Does that mean you sleep on a dung heap?” No, I responded, but I, like Alyce, like all of us, was born longing for a name, a full belly, and place in the world. That didn’t really satisfy him. He was hoping for the dung heap.

My novels often reflect the desire to be wanted or included, the need to find a place to belong. I am not surprised. Like Alyce and Meggy, Francine and Matilda, I was a bit of an outsider growing up, often lonely and confused, but stubborn and independent, trying to figure out the world and my place in it. I think we are all intrigued by the idea of who we are as

individuals separate from our families and our homes. What would we do if we were on our own? How would we survive? Would we be resourceful and courageous, or helpless? Would we be the same people we are now, or would we grow to be different? What kind of family might we create for

ourselves?

I wrote The Midwife’s Apprentice in part because I wondered about these things, about courage and persistence, identity and responsibility, compassion and kindness and belonging. How could I know them if I didn’t write about them?

Many reviewers have mentioned my “gutsy girls.” I was not a “gutsy girl” growing up, and I never found models of such girls in the books

available to me. But as we are what we eat and hear and experience, so too we are what we read. This, too, is why I write what I do, about gutsy girls— strong young women who in one way or another take responsibility for their own lives; about tolerance, thoughtfulness, and caring; about choosing what is life-affirming and generous; about the certainty of failure and the need for perseverance.

Of all my books, The Midwife’s Apprentice has made most clear the important part readers as well as writers play in the creation of a book. Readers have asked me about the womb symbols, the numerous birth metaphors, and the significance of the number three in the book. What?

Where? I am confounded—I did not consciously include any symbols or metaphors, but readers found them, and if I go back and reread, there they are. Once again, writer and reader are, as has been said, each on one side of the pencil.

At a signing, a five-year-old girl approached me. Her mother had just read the book to her and her two older sisters. “The book is all about a cat,” the girl said. She told me what the cat did and said in this book, to her not about a midwife or her apprentice, but about a cat. And I told her that Lobelia, my own orange cat, sat on my lap while I wrote about Alyce and Purr, and sometimes she walked across the keyboard, adding her own words to mine.

The next year I received a letter from a high school English as a Second Language class, seniors from other countries—some homeless—who had read The Midwife’s Apprentice and related to the story of a girl searching for a place in the world. They sent me a class photo. There they were, seventeen years old: girls with teased hair and eye makeup, six-foot-tall

boys with mustaches, all holding up their copies of Alyce’s story and smiling. They are all Alyce, seeking their name, their way, their place in this world so new to them.

How do I feel about The Midwife’s Apprentice now, nearly twenty years later? I am proud of its simplicity and its wisdom. I often cite it as my

favorite of my books because its creation gave me less trouble than my other titles. I love the character of Alyce—skinny, big-eyed, and hopeful— and the smart, independent, but tender Purr, an amalgam of all my beloved cats. And I still love what the book says about being in the world. My first draft ended with a despondent Alyce, having failed in a difficult delivery, leaving the midwife and the village to make a new life somewhere else. It soon became obvious that Alyce had to return to the village to confront her failure, to try again until she succeeds with courage, tenacity, and hope—as we all must. For Alyce’s story is also my story, and your story, despite our not sleeping on a dung heap. I hope you enjoy it.

Karen Cushman

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