The next chapter in the life of The Midwife, Hannah Sokolow, finds her living in turn-of-the-century New York and launching a career as a sex therapist in the face of the decline of the midwifery profession. 50,000 first printing. $50,000 ad/promo. Hannah Sokolow ( The Midwife , LJ 1/15/81. o.p.) returns in a sequel covering the years 1913-22. The persistent questions of her patients at Bellevue Hospital drive Hannah to consult privately about sexual behavior. Each chapter deals with a different year and a different problem. Underlying the discussion of sexual and medical conditions are the political events of the day--World War I, the battle for birth control, and the Russian revolution--and medical or political details often slow this long book. Hannah's love affair during her husband's prolonged absence in Mother Russia adds interest. While Hannah may be atypical in her professional successes (the title comes from her advice column in a Yiddish paper), her efforts to work while being a wife and mother without much help will be familiar to many. Competent, but not compelling; for libraries where The Midwife was popular. Literary Guild alternate; previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/92. - Rebecca S. Kelm, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. In The Midwife (1981), Hannah Blau Sokolow, Jewish-Russian midwife, delivered babies in Russia, in America, on the high seas, and detoured into advice on sexual matters. Now established as a midwife at Bellevue Hospital in 1913 Manhattan, Hannah, married to Trotskyite Laser and mother of two, will blossom into a full- fledged sex therapist. One of the first problems tackled by Hannah, encountering a wretched girl-producing patient, is why (as the patient claims) Orthodox Jews seem to produce an inordinate number of boys. Hannah researches both religion and science and produces results (Courter documents this unusual research in her ``Author's Note''). Meanwhile, as Hannah is monitoring birthings, other problems catch her interest: frigid women, impotent men, the nature of sexuality (she felt that, in spite of Dr. Freud, Adam came from Eve and not vice versa), lack of sexual impulses, and even the woes of a cross- dresser. But while Hannah is Dr. Ruth-ing, home problems impinge. Laser is off to Russia with Trotsky (he'll eventually return, disillusioned); there are battles to be fought for women's rights and legalization of birth-control information; and Hannah is into a hopeless love affair with a Bellevue physician. Throughout, we get glimpses of political celebrities of the time--Mabel Dodge, Margaret Sanger, radical Emma Goldman, and even Trotsky himself- -grim and rude. Finally, Hannah will become famous as a sex therapist via a newspaper column and a book. Again, for the Belva Plain audience and for those enthralled by dramas centered on the nether end: a ham-handed treatment of delicate matters--which should fairly fly off the airport bookracks. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.