Kate Banner is a North American midwife helping flood victims in Nicaragua in the 1980s. When she loses another patient-a young woman who gave birth only the night before in the bottom of a swamped wooden boat-Kate knows it is time to go home. But her journey home leads her first into the seething secret wars of Guatemala, where she discovers her greatest challenges, and her greatest chances to love.

A finalist for the National Book Award and The New Yorker Best Book Awards when it was originally published in 1999, Patricia Henley's Hummingbird House is the devastatingly powerful and emotionally unforgettable story of a human heart unbinding itself in the most unjust of worlds. This beautiful novel of women in war delivers an ending marked by its passion, strength, substance, and beauty.

This 20th anniversary edition includes a foreword by Steve Yarbrough, a Book Club Readers Guide and a new Q&A with the author.