Jennifer Worth was just twenty-two when she volunteered to spend her early years of midwifery training in London's East End in the 1950s. Coming from a sheltered background there were tough lessons to be learned. The conditions in which many women gave birth just half a century ago were horrifying.

Seduced by her employer's son, Evangeline, a naïve young governess in early nineteenth-century London, is discharged when her pregnancy is discovered and sent to the notorious Newgate Prison. After months in the fetid, overcrowded jail, she learns she is sentenced to "the land beyond the seas," Van Diemen's Land, a penal colony in Australia. Though uncertain of what awaits, Evangeline knows one thing: the child she carries will be born on the months-long...

"Eva has only been married for eight months when her husband, Jackson, is swept to his death while fishing. Weighed down by confusion and sorrow, Eva decides to take leave of her midwifery practice in London and visit Jackson's estranged family in Tasmania with the hope of grieving together. Instead, she discovers that the man she loved so deeply is not the man she thought she knew. Jackson's father and brother reveal a dark past, exposing the lies...

Midwife Sarah Brandt and detective sergeant Frank Malloy investigate the stabbing death of a young woman who had been blackmailing vulnerable men and the subsequent attack on an inquiring news reporter.