My Name is Mary Sutter [Paperback]

Mary Sutter is from a well-to-do family in Albany New York and the females in her family have been midwives for generations, but Mary dreams the impossible dream of being a surgeon. When the sabers rattle between the North and the South and the men of Albany gleefully join the Army, Mary heads for Washington City - if she can't be a surgeon she'll nurse instead - and she is soon literally up to her neck in wounded soldiers. Mary's story takes her to several battlefields and through her eyes we see the horror of what these poor soldiers suffered at the hands of ignorant politicians and incompetent generals. I haven't the words for it, so I will let these quotes do the *talking*,

"If we let one on the train who will die anyway, it will doom two."

"In all the world, there is not medicine enough to heal what ails the Union army, mopping or no."

"How do you forget coffins? How do you forget to supply tourniquets? How do you forget that people might die?"

"Days later, the citizens of Washington would remark that the Potomac had turned the color of rust, but would not make the connection until news of the enormous numbers of casualties came pouring in."

"If they had just washed their hands between patients, then all those deaths could have been prevented."

This is a novel that will move you and anger you. I actually had to put it down a couple of times and take an emotional break with something lighter. You will learn a whole lot more about the removal of limbs than you might ever wish to know and if you are the least bit fainthearted this might not the book for you. One more thing, if you're expecting "a gorgeous love story" as one jacket blurber mentions - you are not going to find it here. Yes there are three men who love Mary but that is not the main focus of this book, nor should it be considered *chick lit*. Like other reviewers, I wasn't that fond of the chapters with Lincoln and his cronies but other than that this is a solid five star read, and would make an excellent book club choice.

In the last few years I've enjoyed quite a few books set during the American Civil War - I'm not interested in the battles themselves, but the social changes taking place in the background (abolition of slavery, changing role of women etc) and this compelling story is one of the best I've read.

Despite coming from a relatively wealthy family, Mary Sutter (like her mother before her) works as a midwife. However, her fascination with medicine doesn't end there and she dreams of becoming surgeon, an almost impossible ambition for a woman of her class at that time, and accordingly, the doors of the city's medical school are closed in her face. She almost succeeds in persuading a local doctor, James Blevens, to take her on as an apprentice, when the Civil War intervenes and changes the course of both their lives.

Blevens enlists as a regimental surgeon, and Mary responds to the call of Dorothea Dix (America's own Florence Nightingale) who has persuaded Lincoln to allow her to recruit a band of female nurses to serve alongside the army medics. In order to avoid inflaming the ardour of wounded soldiers, Dix is very specific about the type of nurse she requires:

"No woman under 30 need apply to serve in government hospitals. All nurses are required to be very plain-looking women. Their dresses must be brown or black with no bows, no curls, no jewellery and no hooped skirts".

Despite being turned down because of her age (otherwise she fits the bill perfectly), Mary's determination secures her a position in an army hospital in Washington, where she finds herself working alongside Blevens' mentor, William Stipp, assisting him as he carries out countless amputations and other gruesome surgical procedures. I was a little worried that the `romantic' element of the book would get in the way of Mary`s ambition, but it doesn't. Blevens and Stipp are integral and very interesting characters; both have their own reasons for wanting to throw themselves into the chaos of war and escape their pasts. I found myself becoming absorbed in Mary's dealings with them (and another potential suitor) and cheering when she picked the right one in the end!

Robin Oliveira has obviously done a lot of research into the Civil War and the medics who tended to the wounded soldiers. She mentions in her acknowledgements that "nearly twenty" women became physicians after their experiences nursing during the Civil War - okay that doesn't sound a lot, but quite remarkable when you consider the hostility and prejudice they would have encountered at the time.

Loved this book - particularly the fact that Mary Sutter was an unconventional heroine in some respects but such a strong woman underneath it all.
Quite a few twists and turns in the tale and the level of historical detail was amazing.