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Traveling to Civil War-era Washington, D.C., to tend wounded soldiers and pursue her dream of becoming a surgeon, headstrong midwife Mary receives guidance from two smitten doctors and resists her mother's pleas for her to return home.
whymaggiemay: Both novels show the medical side of the war, from the surgeon's and nurses points of view, albeit that the view in Mary Sutter is much grittier.
whymaggiemay: Both these books reminded me of how lucky I was to be born in the latter part of the 20th Century when medicine had been so greatly improved.
This book is the tale of a young midwife who wants to become a surgeon and gets her training on the battlefields of the Civil War. I found the story confusing at the start, as if I had been dropped into the middle of a movie that I had missed the first half hour. The characters were a little hazy - as if the author took for granted that we knew what was in her mind. The ending seemed rather abrupt. Nevertheless, the story held my interest. ( )
Another serendipitous thrift store find, MY NAME IS MARY SUTTER (2010) was Robin Oliveira's first novel, which is hard to believe, because it is so perfect, and so good! The title character is a young midwife (trained by her widowed mother) in 1860s Albany who longs to be a surgeon, but her application to the local medical school is rejected because she is a woman, and James Blevens, the young local doctor, refuses to take her on as an apprentice for the same reason. She is also secretly in love with Thomas, the recently orphaned young man next door, but he is enamored with her much prettier twin sister, Jenny. Then the Civil War intervenes, changing everything, as Thomas quickly marries (and impregnates) Jenny, enlists in the Union Army and departs, as do Dr Blevens and Mary's younger brother, Christian. Bereft and restless, Mary soon answers a call (from Dorothea Dix) for nurses in Washington, D.C., where she quickly becomes caught up in the confusion and madness of the War, and also manages to apprentice herself to the much older, widowed Dr William Stipp. Many historical figures play minor roles in Mary's story - Generals McClellan, Winfield Scott and orhers. Surgeons Letterman and Tripler; and, of course, President Lincoln, and his young secretary, John Hay. The author expertly weaves these persons into Mary Sutter's horrific baptism by fire in the horrific conditions of hastily assembled and ill-equipped hospitals in D..C., and then the filthy, primitive field hospitals near the battlefields of Manassas, Fairfax, and Antietam, strewn with thousands of dead and wounded soldiers from both sides of the conflict. After Antietam, Mary returns home, but her story continues a few years after the war in a heartwarming Epilogue.
I absolutely loved this book, and was sorry to see it end. But then I Googled the author and happily discovered that she has written a sequel called WINTER SISTERS. Time permitting, I will try to read that one too. This one? A worthy addition to the growing genre of War Lit. Bravo, Ms Oliveira. My very highest recommendation.
- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER ( )
Set during the Civil War, Mary is determined to be a female surgeon, no matter how much she's turned away from apprenticeship or medical school. Quite a bit set in DC and northern Virginia, and interesting to me because of the locales that I knew - such as why there are no old trees in Alexandria - they were all clear cut to make the union forts to protect DC. Very gory accounts of what she and Dr. Stipp had to do for amputations, and how far away antibiotics and other healing methods were. It's a miracle that anyone survived any injury. ( )
A great tale of strong women, medicine and the Civil War.
Mary Sutter lives in Albany with her family, her mother being a sought after mid-wife in the community. As Mary grows-up she begins to follow her mother to appointments and births and begins to love the work. Her twin sister Jenny, not so much. But Mary had higher aspirations and searched for a Surgeon to apprentice with, or a Medical School that will admit her. Neither materializes and with the the outbreak of the Civil War, Mary eyes Washington as the place she may be able to follow her calling.
Robin Oliveira writes with passion and color. This book won the James Joyce First Novel Fellowship for a work-in-progress. She mixed fictional characters with real people(among those in this novel, Lincoln, Clara Barton, Dorthea Dix and of course all those names of Generals we know from that time period).
There is a sequel to this book Winter Sisters, which I read last year, before I knew it was # 2 in the series. Both can be read as stand-alone, but I am glad I went back to learn about the younger Mary. ( )
An excellent captivating read capturing the struggle women who wanted to serve faced. Plus all the characters come alive and add dimension to the plot. The author did her research, even if Mary Sutter was not a real person but a composition of 11 women who did become doctors during this time period.
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For Drew, whose love and generosity never falter, and for my mother, who bequeathed me her muse
Incipit
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"Are you Mary Sutter?"
Citazioni
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When they were younger, they played with the children of the laboring mother; when they were older, they hauled and boiled water, listened to birthing cries in houses high and low, becoming accustomed to joy being predicted on misery. This accounted for their assured nature; prescient, possessed, they would later feel at home anywhere and in the face of anything.
Mary unfurled was formidable and her family all knew it and, it seemed, sometimes despaired of it.
Mary inhaled the information her mother dispensed. Centuries of wisdom resided in Amelia's muscles. Often, when Mary asked questions, Amelia could not answer unless she was in the act itself, able to remember only as she performed. Instinct as textbook.
Mary could see him making the comparison, not unlike everyone else who ever heard the word twin in the presence of the two of them. The envy she thought she had mastered years ago opened inside her, swelling and pressing against her diaphragm, making it hard to breathe while she tallied which of her inadequacies stood out the most...
Life existed or did not exist based, at least in part, on the goodwill of man. Really, in the end, everything had turned out to be as simple as that. (p.353)
What Lee and Jefferson Davis didn't understand was that to destroy a union founded on freedom was to declare all of humanity's endeavors foolhardy. To fail at this would be to fail at God's work. (p.313)
Along the railroad line, in the opposite direction from which the trains had been arriving, a long line of ambulances was materializing out of the gray mist. Plodding toward the station through the dew and drizzle of the dawn. In between them and the station, a continuous, unbroken multitude of men lay on the rocky ground. She could not see the end of them. She had guessed before that there were perhaps five hundred wounded, but now she saw that there were thousands.
“Organize the wounded into groups.” It took a moment for what Stipp was saying to her to penetrate, and then its meaning entered her like a knife. “You want me to choose?”
...happiness was the province of the young, that with each passing year you lose your hold on it, that it was as fleeting a pleasure as the falling stars. (p.191)
”Fuck,” Stipp muttered, worried now because Mary couldn't do all three: read, apply pressure to the artery, and draw back the muscles as well. After a moment of dread … he leaned over, placed his left forearm against the boy's thigh, and drew back the muscles as well as he could. He then put knife to skin above the knee. Though the flesh resisted like a tough steak, he managed to make a series of awkward cuts, working the blade in a sloppy, imprecise manner. There was no telling how long it took. Time was its own meter, stretching to magnify his incompetence.
At the first sign of red muscle, he pulled back. It was one thing to cut skin, another to sever muscles. Would they snap back? Disappear under the flesh? To what would he anchor them afterwards? Oh, curse his medical training! Six months of courses at Yale; not one surgery performed under anyone's auspices. In New York, little surgery, more management of epidemics. Any latent skill he possessed was merely guesswork augmented by common sense. What would a cut muscle do?
Contradiction the rule of the land. Right and wrong were as interchangeable these days, it seemed, as the winds, and yet here was one concrete thing he could achieve, would achieve before the end, whenever that came. (p.315)
After the carnage, real love had suddenly seemed to be not so much likeness of mind as responsibility met, and a promise, however foolishly entered, kept. (p.353)
January of 1862, when Jenny was due, would be the busiest month for midwives in ten years. Farewell babies, they would be called. Three months later, in April, there would be another round of newborns nine months after Lincoln called for yet another hundred thousand men.
If only one could take a microscope to a person in whole, not just in parts.
Ultime parole
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"You need me," Mary whispered. But Stipp knew Mary's declaration was as much a confession as it was a statement. She could have as easily have said, I need you. Mary smoothed the collar of Stipp's shirt. He lifted her hand in his and slowly raised it to his lips.
Traveling to Civil War-era Washington, D.C., to tend wounded soldiers and pursue her dream of becoming a surgeon, headstrong midwife Mary receives guidance from two smitten doctors and resists her mother's pleas for her to return home.
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