Friends
I want to share my enthusiasm for a new novel called MY NAME IS MARY SUTTER (Viking, $26.95). Robin Oliveira is reading from the book and discussing it next Sunday afternoon, May 23 at 5 p.m. Robin is a nurse and has written a completely convincing novel about a young Albany woman who wants to become a doctor and serve the Union during the Civil War.
Mary was rejected by medical school and rebuffed by a physician to whom she offered to apprentice. She decides to leave for Washington to work in a wartime hospital, where she observes Union forces woefully unprepared for battle carnage. Mary is proud and determined. Apprenticing herself to the hospital doctors, she becomes an accomplished field physician. But she loses some of herself as well. Devoted to her mission, she neglects her family's needs. Oliveira, herself a nurse, has convincingly recreated real events and real places, but the story is never weighed down by research. I found myself thinking about Mary long after I finished the book.
I think the book has everything: the feminist angle, a moving story about the Civil War, and love interest. Come hear Robin introduce her book.