My Name Is Mary Sutter

I am having a difficult time getting "into" this novel, and in fact am quite bored. I keep hoping it'll get better and grab me. I'm not sure at this point whether I'll even finish it; it's taken me four months and I'm only halfway through (I typically read a book of this length in about three or four days).

Sometimes the reader is lucky enough to pick up a book that they can get lost in. Place and time disappear and all that is left is immersion in the written word. We become one with the book. My Name is Mary Sutter is such a book. From the time I started it until the very last page, all that existed for me was the story - the ebb and flow of events. I was transported. The time is 1861 and the novel starts in Albany, New York. Mary Sutter is a determined woman, intelligent and headstrong. She is not like the average woman of her time. "She knew that it was said of her that she was odd and difficult, and this did not bother her, for she never thought about what people usually spent time thinking of. The idle talk of other people always perplexed her; her mind was usually occupied by things no one else thought of: the structure of the pelvis, the fast beat of a healthy fetus heart, or the slow meander of an unhealthy one, or a baby who had failed to breathe." Mary is an accomplished midwife but she has dreams of becoming a surgeon. Never has a woman been admitted into medical school nor been accepted as an apprentice to a working surgeon. Mary writes letter after letter applying to the Albany School of Medicine and does not even receive the courtesy of a reply. Mary approaches an Albany surgeon, James Blevins, and inquires about apprenticing with him. He declines to take Mary on but they begin a friendship that endures time and hardship. The Sutters are supportive and close. Mary has a twin, Jenny, who is as unlike Mary as any person can be. Still, they are close and loving. Amelia, Mary's mother, is a midwife from whom Mary has learned her skills. The family comes from a long line of midwives. Christian is Mary's beloved younger brother. The family is financially secure due to Mary's father's business. When the book opens, Mary's father has recently died and the family is in mourning. A new family moves in next door and Thomas Fall, an attractive young man, is drawn into the lives of the Sutter family. Mary is instantly attracted to him and feels like he is responsive to her feelings. However, he is more drawn to her sister Jenny and ends up marrying her. Mary is crushed. At the same time, the Civil War is beginning. Mary decides that she needs to leave Albany to mend her heart and help out in the war efforts. She hopes to find someone she can apprentice with in Washington and attain her dream of becoming a surgeon. At the same time, her brother Christian signs up to fight for the Union. Nothing can prepare Mary for the horrific conditions in Washington. Though there is a war in progress, the Union government has not prepared for the medical necessities wrought by battle. The hospitals are not equipped with anything but the barest of necessities. Most of the surgeons who are manning the hospitals have never had to do an amputation, let alone take care of epidemics like typhoid or dysentery that are caused by close

This is an absolutely engaging novel about a determined woman named Mary Sutter. Mary is the daugher of a midwife... who was the daughter of a midwife... etc. Yet she longs for more--she wants to be a surgeon. Even as a wealthy woman in Albany, NY--she cannot get a medical college to admit her... or a surgeon to let her apprentice. Then the Civil War comes, and the great need, coupled with her determination, allows her to finally study the field she loves and longs to know more about. Woven throughout you'll find a few love stories, and quite a few tragedies--as both war and childbirth are fraught with casualties. I don't want to give away too much in this review. Robin Oliveira does a wonderful job in recreating civil war era medicine as well as Washington. I could not put down this novel--and finished it in a day. It hooked me from the get-go. I expect this to be a best seller.

What a fascinating and powerful story this was. A midwife that wants to be a surgeon during the time in history that women were still not allowed into medical school (if you could even call them that), the Civil War is breaking out and her fraternal twin sister has just snagged the man that Mary is interested in. Mary is determined though, that she will become a doctor. She finds her way into medical work in every way she can including working at a horribly filthy and dilapidated hospital in Washington as the wounded soldiers are brought in. Eventually she walks up to the White House to Abraham Lincoln's aid and ask for resources to help the soldiers in the field, where she convinces a surgeon to teach her to do surgery by doing leg amputations one after another. Although careful and skilled, she and the other doctors are distressed to see their patients who seem to be on the mend, succumb to fever and infection. It is only in the few years following the war that the germ theory was learned of and that if they had only washed their hands between patients and cleaned their instruments, many of the Civil War soldiers could have been saved from death. A book that so easily could have broken down into a trite love story gone wrong, or a skimming the surface of her desire to be a doctor and the two doctors that loved her. The author instead puts us in the mud and vermin infested hospitals and you begin to experience and learn about the Civil War in ways that I had never before known. Of troops sent out with no training, no supplies and no food. No knowledge of true sanitary practices. Of a country that has tilted on its axis as states fight each other and at times brother against brother. Robin Oliveira deals with it all and makes this a novel that will haunt you and make you realize in many ways the futility of war and the discrimination that women had to go through to do the things that they are so capable of--such as being doctors. Of women being given permission to be themselves. I expect many good things in the future from this author.

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.

The publisher of MY NAME IS MARY SUTTER hopes for a first novel that is memorable, compelling, readable and exceptional. MY NAME IS MARY SUTTER fills the bill. In the contemporary USA nearly 50% of medical students are female. During civil war times,it was considered preposterous that any woman could aspire to be a physician and surgeon. Mary was a skilled midwife, having learned this from her Mother Amelia. People sought Mary out to deliver their babies. Mary was skilled, tender, and dedicated. Nonetheless she aspired to be a doctor.She was ridiculed, pushed aside, told she wanted too much and forced to be a charwoman rather than a nurse. As the civil war wound on with its horrible butchery, Mary's skills were needed and respected. In the war surgery consisted of amputations. Medicines were crude and often in short supply or nonexistent. The soldiers and the medical people who assisted them suffered terribly. More soldiers died from disease and inadequate treatment than in battle. Mary persevered and became a physician and surgeon.In this quest she had to overcome heartbreaking and gut-wrenching circumstances of personal and profession grief. This book is worthy of your time and attention. Don't pass it by.