My Name Is Mary Sutter: A Novel [Hardcover]

Robin Oliveira (Author)

Book Description

Release date: May 13, 2010

An enthralling historical novel about a young woman's struggle to become a doctor during the Civil War

In this stunning first novel, Mary Sutter is a brilliant, head­strong midwife from Albany, New York, who dreams of becoming a surgeon. Determined to overcome the prejudices against women in medicine-and eager to run away from her recent heartbreak- Mary leaves home and travels to Washington, D.C. to help tend the legions of Civil War wounded. Under the guidance of William Stipp and James Blevens-two surgeons who fall unwittingly in love with Mary's courage, will, and stubbornness in the face of suffering-and resisting her mother's pleas to return home to help with the birth of her twin sister's baby, Mary pursues her medical career in the desperately overwhelmed hospitals of the capital.

Like Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain and Robert Hicks's The Widow of the South, My Name Is Mary Sutter powerfully evokes the atmosphere of the period. Rich with historical detail (including marvelous depictions of Lincoln, Dorothea Dix, General McClellan, and John Hay among others), and full of the tragedies and challenges of wartime, My Name Is Mary Sutter is an exceptional novel. And in Mary herself, Robin Oliveira has created a truly unforgettable heroine whose unwavering determination and vulnerability will resonate with readers everywhere.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Ten Books That Helped Me to Write My Name Is Mary Sutter

The following is by no means an exhaustive accounting of the myriad books that helped me to understand not only the Civil War and its effect on its participants, but also the 19th century and its transportation systems, cities, and values. If I were to inventory my bibliography it its entirety, the list would go on for pages and pages. Numerous rare books, diaries, surgeons’ manuals and government documents aided my research, including, for example, Hermann Haupt’s excellent memoirs and the surgery manual mentioned in My Name Is Mary Sutter. To compose this suggested reading list, I sampled my bookshelf. Some of these are reference books, some memoir, some great narratives of history. The books are readily available, with the exception of The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, which, however, is obtainable either through inter-library loan or in many libraries’ rare books collections. And finally, I would consider myself remiss if I did not include one very special work of fiction that influenced me tremendously as a writer, which I have listed first.

--Robin Oliveira

1) The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard

2) The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, all six volumes (Now available as The Medical and Surgical History of the Civil War, but I used the original volumes to do my research)

3) Too Afraid to Cry: Maryland Civilians in the Antietam Campaign by Kathleen A. Ernst

4) Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (The History of New York City) by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace

5) An Albany Girlhood by Huybertie Pruyn Hamlin

6) Our Army Nurses by Mary Gardner Holland

7) Revelle in Washington, 1860-1865 by Margaret Leech

8) The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac, 1861-1865 by E. B. Long and Barbara Long

9) Mr. Lincoln’s City: An Illustrated Guide to the Civil War Sites of Washington by Richard M. Lee

10) Doctors in Blue: The Medical History of the Union Army in the Civil War by George Worthington Adams

(Photo of Robin Oliveira © Fred Milkie, Jr.)

From Publishers Weekly

The Civil War offers a 20-year-old midwife who dreams of becoming a doctor the medical experience she craves, plus hard work and heartbreak, in this rich debut that takes readers from a small upstate New York doctor's office to a Union hospital overflowing with the wounded and dying. Though she's too young for the nursing corps, Mary Sutter goes to Washington, anyway, and, after a chance meeting with a presidential secretary, is led to the Union Hotel Hospital, where she assists chief surgeon William Stipp and becomes so integral to Stipp's work she ignores her mother's pleas to return home to deliver her sister's baby. From a variety of perspectives—Mary, Stipp, their families, and social, political, and military leaders—the novel offers readers a picture of a time of medical hardship, crisis, and opportunity. Oliveira depicts the amputation of a leg, the delivery of a baby, and soldierly life; these are among the fine details that set this novel above the gauzier variety of Civil War fiction. The focus on often horrific medicine and the women who practiced it against all odds makes for compelling reading. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; 1 edition (May 13, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670021679
• ISBN-13: 978-0670021673
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (196 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #535,996 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robin Oliveira received an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and was awarded the James Jones First Novel Fellowship for a work-in-progress for My Name is Mary Sutter. She lives in Seattle, Washington.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

194 of 205 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A TALE OF COURAGE AND PURPOSE April 5, 2010

By Patricia L. Marks VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

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.

82 of 85 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A powerful novel, and not for the faint of heart April 11, 2010

By Misfit TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

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.

67 of 71 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars My Name is Mary Sutter April 16, 2010

By Gail Rodgers VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

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.