Desert Birthright: A Midwife's Memoir

by Lori Wrankle

192 pages, Paperback

Published November 3, 2025

Reviews

[Claire Leticia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love memoirs, and this book is a testament as to why I love them. I was so enveloped in Lori's story and couldn't put the book down. Her attentiveness with each birth and the care she brought to these women is something so special, a sacred relationship between two women working together and trusting one another. I learned so much from her expertise about birth and birthing bodies, it was fascinating to read about. To see a practice that centers nurturing, deep listening, trust and respect for women, their bodies, and their babies is so refreshing juxtaposed to the medical industry's treatment of women. Lori's journey from childhood to adulthood, in midwifery and in her own path of leaving her religion and blossoming into her true self is so powerful and inspiring. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and can't wait to read it again!

[Beth Icard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm going to start counting books in my reading challenge that I copyedited or proofread, when they're available here on Goodreads for me to add in a timely manner. It's only fair. It's a damn lot of reading I'm not including otherwise.

Deeply fascinating book and a pleasure to work on. Can't wait to have my own copy. :)

[Wendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting window into the life of a midwife working among communities in southern Utah. After some exploration of the author's Missouri childhood, BYU college experience, and temple marriage (in the vein of more by-the-book Mormon experiences), the memoir shifts more or less to a series of birthing-related vignettes over the ensuing two decades of her life. Most of the vignettes relate to her midwifery, particularly among FLDS (fundamentalist Latter-Day Saint) polygamist communities that *can* be very closed-off and patriarchal. Anthropologically (both looking at the communities she worked within and looking at her own views on women, childbirth, and religion), it's definitely interesting, even if rather uneven in the writing itself.