My Name is Mary Sutter

My Name is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira Adult New Book Display - Main Level Oliveira

Mary Sutter is a 20-year-old midwife in Civil War-era New York. She dreams of becoming a surgeon, but can find no one to apprentice her. The medical school in Albany will not admit women. She decides to go to Washington D.C. to volunteer with army nurses. She's too young, and her mother pleads with her not go to, but she sneaks away. Even the famed Dorothea Dix won't take her on, so she has to find a willing surgeon to work with. She finds Dr. William Stipp in the Union Hotel (which has been converted to a war hospital). He begrudgingly takes her on, and ultimately finds her irreplacable! Mary is not squeamish about the brutality of war medicine: amputations are a necessity, and Mary skillfully helps Dr. Stipp in any way she can. Meanwhile, her sister and mother are at home in New York, begging her to return to deliver her sister's baby. Her sister's husband and her brother are both off fighting the war. This is a very realistic portrayal of women, medicine, and the Civil War...historical fiction at its best!