My Name is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira

I really appreciated the author’s elegant use of language and evident historical research; Oliveira did such a good job describing the unsanitary and unsafe medical conditions of the time, I became squeamish reading the details. The interpersonal relationships and emotional entanglements sometimes verged on what would have been the melodramatic under different circumstances, in the context of the Civil War they felt fitting given the stress of the times. I admired the characters depicted in this historical novel, particularly Mary Sutter herself who encounter personal, medical, and political challenges at every turn. Our culture has changed so drastically since the Civil War and it is important to be reminded of the hardships faced by the country during those years.