Why is this book on the shelf? 'Blood Feud' & 'The Midwife’s Apprentice'
Book reviews I: A limited series
“Of making many books there is no end…”1
In my teenage years, when I was trying to stop unhealthy thought patterns, I developed mental exercises to help me cope.2 One of them was creating a list of the books I needed for life. Like any normal young person, I had many different visions of my future adult life. Varied as they were, all my dreams involved me wandering the earth with few possessions and living in small spaces. I have loved books since learning to read at age five. What few books should be my life companions was a very important question, one I could never finally answer.
As I approach middle age, I realize that none of my youthful dreams have come true. Yet I have still travelled the globe in multiple directions, both shedding and acquiring books along the way. My current dwelling contains nearly all my possessions within a 90 square foot space. Recently, inspired by
’s articles on personal libraries, I counted the books in my space. They number around 175, far more than the quota of 20 I envisioned carrying with me into adulthood. Nonetheless, due to the limited space, every book I own has a very specific reason for being on my shelf. I would like to share some of those books and the reasons I have for keeping them.Blood Feud by Rosemary Sutcliff
I first discovered the writing of Rosemary Sutcliff while playing homeschool hookey, which involves reading the interesting book you found until you hear your mother coming, concealing it quickly, and appearing to diligently study while she checks on you. I didn’t even take note of the author’s name at the time, being more interested in the story. I eventually shared the book with my siblings, who also enjoyed it. Later, one of them discovered through serendipity, that agent of discovery before the internet search engine, that this Rosemary Sutcliff person had written more books. Via the library and used bookstores, we began to read all we could find of her works. My youngest sibling found Blood Feud in a library book sale and gave it to me as a birthday gift.
Blood Feud is one of the lesser-known works of Rosemary Sutcliff, who is still not as well known as she deserves. It is a slim book, just 144 pages divided into 22 brief chapters. But the story spans Viking Age Europe from Dublin to Kiev, from a Scandinavian settlement to the metropolis of Constantinople, and runs the gamut of human experience between despair and hope, hatred and love, joy and sorrow, pain and peace. I love Sutcliff’s writing because of the intense clarity with which she envisions the ordinary human life of people in other ages and places than her own. She understood that, however much history and geography may impact the ways in which humans live, humans experience those outward differences within something we all have in common, the human body. Of all her books, Blood Feud resonates most deeply with my own embodied experience.
Sutcliff, who was significantly disabled by the childhood effects of Still’s disease, often explores the impact of physical disability and what it means to participate in the alleviation of physical suffering.3 The narrator of Blood Feud, Jestyn, begins his working life as a cattle herder on the coast of Saxon England. Through a series of large and small events he becomes a physician’s assistant in Constantinople. Perhaps because of her childhood experience of hospitalization, an experience I have in common with her, Sutcliff viewed healing as an innate talent.4 To her, medical training was like musical or artistic training, the perfecting of a natural gift that not everyone has.
Demetriades bent over the man, feeling the pulse in the base of his throat, then straightened and turned to me. ‘Thank you for your help tonight, you have the healing gift in your hands.’
‘If so, it was learned on cattle,’ I said.
‘No. The skill was learned on cattle; the gift is from God.’5
I was given Blood Feud around the time that I began training to become a nurse. I had been interested in studying medicine since I was an adolescent, but as an introvert who found it nearly impossible to start a conversation with a stranger, I seemed ill equipped for a healthcare profession. Going through nursing school – twice, once for a diploma, then for a degree – is the hardest thing I have ever done. As I struggled to complete the exacting programs, I often wondered whether I really had any gift of caring for people. Like Demetriades with Jestyn, it was not I who first noticed my gift, it was my instructors. I was not perfect – I still quiver over the memories of my mistakes, although, thankfully, none of them caused harm – yet my teachers consistently told me in both word and deed, that I belonged in their profession. When I got my diploma, I was given an award. My degree says summa cum laude.
I still do not fully trust in my own abilities – a good healthcare worker should never be complacent – but I know that I have the healing gift of which Sutcliff writes. In the global South, I once had to dress deep partial thickness burns with the only supplies I had, salt water and bandages made from bedsheets, and the burns eventually healed with minimal scarring and no contractions. In the remote North, I once stitched together a deep cut with a simple suture kit, and it healed without complication. During the isolated pandemic years, I dressed wounds and treated infections in the community, and the thanks of patients, and the affirmation of colleagues who saw the results of my work were all the positive feedback I had or needed. In Blood Feud, Jestyn finds content in the life that his talent gives him. Being a nurse has not brought me financial security or fame. It is precious simply to have the gift of healing and practice it.
It occurs to me I have not at all explained the title of Blood Feud. It is central to the narrative and has, I think, a double meaning. But you need to read it to understand.
The Midwife’s Apprentice by Karen Cushman
The Midwife’s Apprentice has all the pungent earthiness of a Canterbury Tale. Like Chaucer’s stories, it is a fable with a moral, set in a rural medieval community where the anonymous protagonist sets out to find her place in the world.
I read The Midwife’s Apprentice during a season of bitter discouragement. I had returned from overseas in shattered health, my profession was on hold indefinitely, my financial resources were nearly non-existent, and I could not see any way forward.6 One of the few resources still available to me was the public library. Cushman’s book title was intriguing. Overseas, I had helped deliver babies in somewhat unusual conditions and medieval midwifery seemed relatable. I enjoyed the fable, but I was also challenged by its moral. Knowledge and skill are not enough, persistence is also needed:
“I can do what you tell me and take what you give me, and I know how to try and risk and fail and try again and not give up.”7
It took time, but I did try again and did not give up. I ended up getting my degree. Last year, I found this copy in a used bookstore and I knew it belonged on my shelf.
Ecclesiastes 12:12, KJV
Still’s disease is another term for systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis; Sutcliff, Rosemary. Blue Remembered Hills: A recollection. (1983). London: The Bodley Head.
Sutcliff, Rosemary. Blood Feud. (1976). London: Oxford University Press.
Cushman, Karen. The Midwife’s Apprentice. (1995). New York: Harper Trophy.