Patricia Harman is a children's fiction and historical fiction author, who has spent over thirty years caring for women as a midwife. She began her midwife career as a lay-midwife, delivering babies in cabins and on communal farms in West Virginia. Later, she became a nurse-midwife in teaching hospitals and in a community hospital birthing center.
Harman's passion for caring for women and babies led her to become an RN and then to get licensed as a certified nurse midwife. She received her MSN in Nurse-Midwifery from the University of Minnesota in 1985. For the past twenty years, she has been a nurse-midwife on the faculty of The Ohio State University, Case Western Reserve University and most recently West Virginia University. In 1998, she went into private practice with her husband, Tom, an OB/Gyn, in Morgantown, West Virginia. Here they devoted their lives to caring for women and bringing babies into the world in a gentle way.
Harman has attended over a thousand births, and her experiences have shaped her writing. In 2003, she gave up deliveries due to the sky-rocketing cost of liability insurance for Obstetrics. However, she still provides care for women in early pregnancy and through-out the life span. Harman's dedication and compassion towards her patients are evident in her writing, making her a beloved author in the historical fiction genre. She currently lives and works with her husband, Ob/Gyn Thomas Harman, in Morgantown, West Virginia at their clinic, Partners in Women's Health Care.