MERINO midwife Heather Harris has left home twice in her life; once when she was 17 to study nursing in Hamilton and again at 52 to work with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), an intermittent journey that would span 11 years.

It was the second departure which forms the basis for her debut book ‘Sweating Bullets, Mopping Blood’ - a midwife’s stories from conflict zones, which Ms Harris will be discussing at an author talk at the Portland library on Thursday, August 10 at 5.30pm.