Review: My Name is Mary Stutter by Robin Oliveria

My Name is Mary Sutter

by Robin Oliveira

Publisher: Viking

Pages: 364

Format: ebook

Buy the Book: Amazon

Goodreads:  Mary Sutter is a brilliant young midwife who dreams of becoming a surgeon. Eager to run away from recent heartbreak, Mary travels to Washington, D.C., to help tend the legions of Civil War wounded. Under the guidance of two surgeons, who both fall unwittingly in love with her, and resisting her mother's pleas to return home to help with the difficult birth of her twin sister's baby, Mary pursues her medical career against all odds. 


Kritters Thoughts:   The Civil War is beginning and the country is upside down.  Many military "experts" or trying to foreshadow what they will need and have no clue what this war could look like.  In the midst of it all is a woman, Mary Sutter who has excelled at being a midwife in her hometown in Albany, but she hasn't achieved the success she wants - she wants to be a surgeon.  Maybe the Civil War will be an avenue for her to become what she wants.

With the title of this book, I was ready for a full book about a Mary Sutter who is a woman who has ambitions to go where not many women have gone before in the medical field in the United States.  Yes, the book had quite a bit that surrounded Mary Sutter, but it was more than that and a few days after reading I am still debating about whether I liked the bits that didn't have Mary.  There were quite a few pages that were beyond Mary and more about the war and its affects on different people at the time.  So be warned that Mary is a big portion, but not the sole focus of the book.  

For a historical fiction book, this was a different perspective on the Civil War as it was beginning and I liked seeing that smaller portion as I am not sure I knew how Lincoln and his Generals were handling the beginning influx of staff and soldiers and the organizing of a war.  

I mostly read this book because I was pitched book two to read, so my review of the sequel will be up tomorrow.  


Rating: definitely a good read, but can't read two in a row