In 1998 she went into private practice with her husband, Tom, an OB/Gyn, in Morgantown, West Virginia.

Harman has been a nurse-midwife on the faculty of The Ohio State University, Case Western Reserve University and most recently West Virginia University. In 1985, with her children, a yowling cat and her husband she traveled north, pulling a broken down trailer to begin her training at the University of Minnesota where she received her MSN in Nurse-Midwifery.įor the past twenty years, Ms. Her passion for caring for women and babies led her to become an RN as the first step in getting licensed as certified nurse midwife. When she returned, she became one of the founding members of The West Virginia Cooperative of Midwives. 'I was staying at a woman friend's commune when she went into labor and I ended up delivering my first baby.' Soon after, Harman traveled to Austin, Texas to train with a collective of home-birth midwives. 'Some people are destined,' she has written. It was during this time that Patsy attended her first home birth, more or less by accident. Here on the commune, they built log houses, dug a pond, grew and preserved their own food and started the Growing Tree Natural Foods Cooperative. In 1974 they purchased a farm with a group of like-minded friends on top of a ridge in Roane County, West Virginia. During the Vietnam years, she and her husband, Tom Harman, traveled the country, often hitch-hiking, as they looked for a place to settle. She spent over a decade in the sixties and seventies in her wild youth living in rural communes in Washington (Tolstoy Farm), Connecticut (The Committee for Non-Violent Action) and Minnesota (Free Folk).

Patricia Harman has spent over thirty years caring for women as a midwife, first as a lay-midwife, delivering babies in cabins and on communal farms in West Virginia, and later as a nurse-midwife in teaching hospitals and in a community hospital birthing center. Afterwards she will be available to sell and sign her books and answer questions. She will also discuss the various ways individuals can get published and answer questions for people who have thought of writing a book. Patricia will read from her historical fiction series, The Midwife of Hope River, and discuss her path to becoming a best selling author. On December 1, 2022, 5-7 pm, Bridgeport Public Library, will open its holiday season by hosting Patricia Harman, local Midwife and Author.

The midwife of hope river series