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Oct 25, 2021
Rachel N.
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Shelves:
new-york,
read-in-2021,
historical-fiction,
play-book-tag,
medicine,
washington-d-c,
albany,
civil-war
The book begins shortly before the American Civil War. Mary Sutter is a talented midwife who wants to become a surgeon but no one will teach her because she is a woman. Once the war starts Mary secretly leaves her mother and pregnant sister to travel to Washington D.C. in hopes of learning surgery. She does end up helping a surgeon at the run down Union Hotel Hospital. I thought Mary's story was interesting. What brought my rating down some is all the detours the author takes away from Mary's st
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This was surprisingly good, for something I picked up randomly because I had store credit at the bookstore. It's a novel about a young midwife from New York who, denied the chance to study to be a doctor (or so it appears), volunteers as a nurse during the Civil War.
Reading about the main character's experiences as a nurse and midwife was fascinating (though there were a *lot* of gruesome amputations of legs). Keeping all the different love triangles straight in my head was less so. The bits abo ...more
Reading about the main character's experiences as a nurse and midwife was fascinating (though there were a *lot* of gruesome amputations of legs). Keeping all the different love triangles straight in my head was less so. The bits abo ...more

I'm not a big fan of books about the Civil War , either fiction or non fiction, but this book is exceptional. A fictional account of a woman who is trained by her mother as a midwife, but has aspirations to be a surgeon. Her efforts to save wounded soldiers, while learning a lot of medicine are well worth reading about.
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May 08, 2010
Gaijinmama
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Aug 30, 2010
Stephanie
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Apr 18, 2011
Polly-Alida
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Jul 13, 2011
Amy 💖
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Nov 29, 2012
Heather-Lea
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May 30, 2013
Wanda
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Jul 15, 2013
Lisa
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Aug 06, 2013
Beth
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Jan 17, 2016
Renate
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Jul 15, 2016
Tracyene
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Nov 08, 2016
Megan
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Nov 25, 2016
Tanya
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Mar 10, 2019
Colleen Chi-Girl
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May 20, 2022
Deedee
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Shelves:
coverx-hands,
m2,
r3,
0t-war,
published-in-05may,
historical-fiction,
o,
year-2010,
m2-no-articles,
title-has-5-words-or-more

Dec 24, 2023
Maureen O'brien
marked it as to-read