The Midwife
In Nazi-occupied Finland during the Lapland War and the final years of WWII, the lives of a young Finnish girl and a Nazi officer intersect as this beautiful yet brutal story unfolds. The midwife is an outsider in her Finnish village, named Weird-Eye by the villagers who belittle and look down on her while at the same time benefiting from her skills as a midwife and healer. Johannes Angelhurst is a Nazi officer who is assigned to Weird-Eye’s village as a journalist and photographer tasked with watching the villagers to report any spying and resistance activities taking place around him.
Johannes is reassigned to the Titkova Nazi prison camp. Weird-Eye is given permission to go to the camp as a nurse/medical assistant to be with him. As the novel reveals, it comes to light what purpose the camp serves. Johannes is guilt-ridden about what he is ordered to do and seeks oblivion in a drug he has access to in the camp. Weird-Eye does her best to relieve the suffering around her, not knowing until late in the story what takes place in some of the camp’s forbidden areas. As the Nazis withdraw from Finland, destroying everything they leave behind, so many lives lay in ruin.
Kettu’s language is heartrending in the telling of this devastating story. At the same time, her beautiful, poetic images of the Arctic landscape make the cold splendor of the setting come to life. The book has received critical acclaim and literary awards in the author’s native Finland. Translation rights have recently been sold worldwide, and it is now available in English. I highly recommend this book even to those who have had their fill of WWII books. Kettu gives us a new look into WWII from the Finnish perspective in Nazi-occupied Finland.
