Blessed Events explores how women who give birth at home use religion to make sense of their births and in turn draw on their birthing experiences to bring meaning to their lives and families. Pamela Klassen introduces a surprisingly diverse group of women, in their own words, while also setting their birth stories within wider social, political, and economic contexts. In doing so, she emerges with a study that disrupts conventional views of both childbirth and religion by blurring assumed divisions between conservative and feminist women and by taking childbirth seriously as a...

So, it was January the 18 and it was the middle of the night. And it was very, very cold. Snow was -- we went just about knee deep in snow -- And we went on the road going toward Posen, capital of Wartegau. And so we said, "Let's take that direction." Just going by the moon and the stars. (Katja Enns)

Going by the Moon and the Stars tells the stories of two Russian Mennonite women who emigrated to Canada after fleeing from the Soviet Union during World War II. Based on ethnographic interviews with the author the women recount, in their own words, their memories of...