North American midwife, Kate Banner, has been living and working in Nicaragua for 14 years and after losing a patient following a difficult birth (the terrified young woman gives birth in the bottom of a swamped wooden boat), Kate decides to return home. She first stops in Guatemala to see old friends and instead meets (and eventually falls in love with) a priest from New Orleans and his household, including a mute street child, Marta, and a Mayan woman who becomes a political activist in search of her husband.

Staying longer in Guatemala than she had planned, Kate's life becomes deeply intertwined with theirs. She ends up making a home with a wide assortment of people in "Hummingbird House," a place where mothers and children come for medical help ["children with emphysema who since birth have breathed in woodsmoke from the indoor cooking fires. . . . We deliver babies. Los milagros. We scold the mothers about too much sugar, too much soda pop. . . . We see with quite clear eyes the war beneath the wars. If you pass this story along, make sure you get it straight. . . Do not walk away in sorrow. Do not be consoled" (326).]