"A Wonderful Canadian Historical"

Canadian Amanda Ryan needs to make a new life for herself after her divorce. So she has moved to the brand new town of Banff, Alberta, taking her widowed grandmother with her. She has purchased property with a small cabin that she can fix up -- and will practice her trade of midwifery. She is posing as a widow instead of a divorced woman, since no patients would come to her if they knew she was divorced. She also feels deeply for orphaned children and hopes to be able to take local orphans in and help them find adoptive homes. After seeking out Tom Murdock, a local building contractor, she discovers that the property sold to her by Tom's business partner actually belongs to Tom, but she has already registered the deed with the land registry office, and decides that Tom is probably not the builder for her.

Tom Murdock's business partner has skipped town with all of the business's fourteen thousand dollars. Tom can't meet payroll, he may lose the business, and his land and cabin now belong to the serious, strait-laced woman who has shown up at his company riding a strange looking bicycle instead of a horse. To top it all off, the woman he thought he would marry has suddenly left town and returned to her family in Calgary. Tom doesn't want the town to know of the embezzlement of his business funds, and he needs all of the work he can get just to meet payroll, so he convinces Amanda to hire him. Amanda insists on helping with the work, and Tom finds more to admire about her each time he sees her. But she is keeping a secret that she won't share with anyone, and carrying a hidden pain deep in her soul.

THE MIDWIFE'S SECRET is a well-written, emotional story that can't help but tug at the heartstrings of any woman. Amanda is a complex, strong woman whose heart has been broken by a husband who didn't love her enough. She has no desire to get involved with any man, but Tom is not just any man. His own troubles may be acute, but he can see past them into the hurting soul of another, and he is strong enough to stick with the woman he is coming to love deeply. The locale features the small town of Banff in its infancy, and is drawn with extremely fine detail that enhances the story and doesn't ever overpower it. Ms. Bridges has written a highly enjoyable novel. I'll be looking for other books about the Murdock brothers.

Reviewed by Cynthia Meidinger
Posted January 28, 2003

Summary

If Amanda Ryan's secret past were known, her fresh start in life would come to a dead stop. No one would readily accept a divorced, barren midwife. Not even, she feared, Tom Murdock. For though he'd roused her slumbering womanhood, she could never be the wife he deserved.

Just when his battered faith in human nature was almost restored, Tom Murdock discovered that Amanda Ryan had outright lied to him, destroying their chances for happiness. Or had she? For this feisty, independent woman, who could never give him the family he'd dreamed of, had made him desire things he'd never imagined.