Froma media release:
Omnifilm Entertainment has secured the rights to the #1 Canadian and international bestseller,  THE BIRTH HOUSE (Penguin Random House Canada)—authored by Ami McKay and inspired by the real-life Scots Bay midwife heroine, Esther Rebecca Steele. Creative team Sherry White (Maudie, Little Dog, Ten Days in the Valley, Frontier) and Kerri MacDonald (Frontier, Little Dog, Republic of Doyle) are on board to develop the television series adaptation.
An arresting portrait of the struggles that women have faced for control of their own bodies, THE BIRTH HOUSE is the story of Dora Rare, the first daughter in five generations of Rares. As apprentice to the outspoken Acadian midwife Miss Babineau, Dora learns to assist the women of a rural Nova Scotia community through infertility, difficult labours, breech births, unwanted pregnancies, and unfulfilling sex lives. During the turbulent World War I era, uncertainty and upheaval accompany the arrival of a brash new medical doctor and his promises of progress and fast, painless childbirth. In a clash between tradition and science, Dora finds herself fighting to protect the rights of women as well as the wisdom of the old ways that have been entrusted to her. Filled with compelling historic events and surprising detail—childbirth in the aftermath of the Halifax Explosion; unconventional relief efforts during the Spanish Flu epidemic in Boston; shared activism between the women’s suffrage movements in Canada, the US and the UK—THE BIRTH HOUSE is an unforgettable tale of women banding together to defend their traditions and create change in a world dominated by the politics of men.
Ami McKay is the author of three internationally bestselling novels—THE BIRTH HOUSE, The Virgin Cure and The Witches of New York, as well as the recent yuletide novella, Half Spent Was the Night. She began her writing career as a freelance journalist, writing and producing radio documentaries for programs such as CBC Radio’s Maritime Magazine, This Morning, OutFront, and The Sunday Edition, as well as NPR’s Soundprint in the United States.
This project is being pitched to potential buyers in the coming weeks.
