Hannah Blau, the midwife, fought savage religious prejudice to gain medical training in Moscow's legendary Imperial College. She fought her own doubts and fears as she plunged into a forbidden love affair and an even more hazard-filled marriage. She fought the awesome odds facing a Jewish immigrant and the bitter hostility of male doctors in turn-of-the-century New York. She fought for her burning dreams and desires. She fought and she won. This magnificent novel follows the courageous and passionate Hannah Blau from the corridors of the Imperial Palace to the Lower East Side and finally to New York's Fifth Avenue mansions - recreating a whole new world of striving, of love, of lust, of life, death and birth.

Hannah Sokolow, the spirited Jewish-American heroine of the international bestseller, The Midwife, returns to tackle new medical challenges in turn-of-the-century New York. As head midwife at Bellevue Hospital, Hannah sees her proud profession taken over by the male-dominated practice of obstetrics. So when a young immigrant woman seeks a solution to a troubling but delicate personal problem, Hannah takes a bold step toward the new medical frontier of sex therapy. Soon she is giving intimate advice not only to her immigrant patients, but also to the intellectuals of Greenwich Village, who inspire her with radical new ideas on such issues as birth control, sex education, and health care. And there are other momentous changes in store for Hannah. For when her husband follows his heart to the turmoil of the Russian Revolution, Hannah follows hers—into a searing affair with a prominent doctor who is separated from her by faith, class, and marriage, but who is drawn to her by a fierce desire that matches her own. This wonderfully vivid novel is alive with the passion of one woman's remarkable strength and with the spirit and striving of early twentieth-century New York.