THE BOOK FAIR
READ AND FULFILL YOUR LIFE
Roberta Rich
Midwife of Venice
Author: Roberta Rich
Published: 2012
Genre: Historical Novel
Cover: E-Book
Pages: 353
Through unflattering descriptions of 16th Century Venice, the author depicts the grave disparities between the wealthy upper class and the starving poor, the streets and canals littered with rot and filth, and the segregation of the Jewish population from the rest of Venice, with the Ghetto and the Jews’ required signature clothing.
As Jewish physicians, forbidden to treat Christians by papal decree, a young midwife, in desperate straits to free her husband from the slavery by Knights in Malta, risks her life, and the entire Jewish Ghetto by attempting to help the wife of a noble.
Though the story abruptly flips back and forth from Hannah’s story to Isaac’s, well-formed characters, both likeable and villainous move about the realistic, historic scenes in a well-developed plot of light suspense and romantic themes.