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The German Midwife  By  cover art

The German Midwife

By: Mandy Robotham
Narrated by: Julia Winwood
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Publisher's summary

The USA Today best seller.

For fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz and Kate Furnivall comes a gritty tale of courage, betrayal and love in the most unlikely of places.

Germany, 1944. Taken from the camps to serve the Führer himself, Anke Hoff is assigned as midwife to one of Hitler’s inner circle. If she refuses, her family will die.

Torn between her duty as a caregiver and her hatred for the Nazi regime, Anke is swept into a life unlike anything she’s ever known - and she discovers that many of those at the Berghof are just as trapped as she is. And soon, she’s falling for a man who will make her world more complicated still....

Before long, the couple is faced with an impossible choice - and the consequences could be deadly. Can their forbidden love survive the horrors of war? And, more importantly, will they?

Published in the UK as A Woman of War Mandy Robotham’s highly awaited next book, The Secret Messenger, is out now.

©2018 Mandy Robotham (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Critic reviews

"Incredibly powerful, harrowing but ultimately uplifting. I couldn’t put this down." (Katie Fforde)

"A fascinating story which had me forgetting it’s fiction! So well written, I was left pondering if the events could actually be true. Enthralling!" (Kitty Neale)

"The German Midwife is a book to harrow the soul and linger long in the mind. Anke, a German midwife sent to a labour camp for aiding Jewish mothers against Third Reich law, is whisked from hell-scape to eerie luxury when she is brought to Hitler's private mountain estate to care for his pregnant mistress Eva Braun. Mandy Robotham writes movingly of the eternal human struggle to preserve reverence for life in the midst of genocide and horror. A powerful, haunting debut." (Kate Quinn)

What listeners say about The German Midwife

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DONT WASTE A CREDIT

If you’d like to listen to about 57 stories of detail after detail about labor, buy this book. Otherwise, don’t waste your money. I’m not exaggerating, 90% of the book is just pointless graphic details about women in labor. Most of the woman have no role in the book and theres zero purpose to the story line by discussing their birthing process. And yet, the author will go on and on about the “lubrication of the vagina during birth” and “massaging the cervix”, etc etc. I kept waiting for there to be a purpose to all of it. There was not. It seems the authors sole purpose is to sell the audience on using a midwife. Which I’m all for but I have zero interest in listening to a book that consists only of story after story of labor. It was repetitive,pointless and boring. Don’t waste a credit.

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15 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Call the Midwife fans: READ THIS

This was a charming story about a midwife wrapped up in the struggle of WWII Germany. Highly recommended. I'm not usually a historical fiction fan, but this story and the angle of a midwife working in a concentration camp immediately drew me in. I ended up researching the story of real-life German midwives in labor camps and found the descriptions in the novel to be very realistic.

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15 people found this helpful

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I would love more from this author!

I simply loved this book. My career has been in women's health care and the birth stories are all too familiar. This story traces the life of a German Midwife during WWII in Germany... from the camps to becoming a midwife to a very important mother-to-be. I won't spoil the plot here, but the feelings of hope and rebirth are paramount to the story. Great narrator, great story.... I was sorry to get to the end.

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14 people found this helpful

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A lovely fiction for any midwife!

As a home birth midwife, I travel by car several hundred miles a week and go through audiobooks like mad. I decided I should try a midwifery fiction story and am so incredibly pleased I chose The German Midwife. Everything about this book, was a turn on. The love story is merely a sweet occurrence in the background of the main plot. The birth scenes are written as if a midwife wrote them, detailed and full of experience, trust & love for the birthing client. The narrator is engaging and refreshing. I will be listening to this again and have already told many midwives in the community about this book!!

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11 people found this helpful

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Incredibly well-written, absorbing, haunting......

I can't recommend this novel more. I am not a huge WWII fan, but I do have a huge interest in midwifery, and through that curiosity I learned a lot of horrible things that happened in Germany during WWII, but also the beautifully written birth scenes, and through that the transcendence of love. The love story in the book is wonderful, and I wept at the end. Performed by the narrator perfectly.

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10 people found this helpful

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Since this book is historical fiction and Mandy could take liberty why was I almost crying at epilogue

Such a great book. I got so involved with main characters This is my favorite genre of books and Mandy didn’t disappoint I will wait for more from her

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8 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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Story Did Not Grip Me

After listening to the audiobook in its entirety, something I do even if I’m not crazy about the story, I found that the store lacked substance, and was sort of repetitive. Unlike other audio books that I’ve listened to, where I couldn’t wait to hear the rest of the story, this one did not do it for me.

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5 people found this helpful

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Inspiring

This book - whether based in truism or not & given the current political climate - inspires us all to be TRUE to our belief systems.

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4 people found this helpful

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GREAT BOOK!!

Loved it and can't wait the read more from this author. The ending is beautiful!

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4 people found this helpful

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Narration almost ruined it

The inconsistent pronunciations of German names was awful. The various british accents nearly ruined it.

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3 people found this helpful