MY NAME IS MARY SUTTER

In Oliveira’s first novel, an ambitious young woman finds love and professional fulfillment while amputating limbs during the Civil War.

Mary Sutter is a midwife—a very good one—but she wants more. She wants to be a doctor, but 19th-cetunry mores won’t permit it. When the nation divides in bloody conflict, Mary seizes the opportunity to learn medicine—and flee from the pain she experiences when a man she loves marries her more conventionally feminine twin, Jenny. The book has many elements that make for compelling historical fiction, but issues with pacing and dialogue are evident from the beginning. The novel’s opening scene features an expectant mother exhausted and endangered by a difficult delivery, which should provide a dramatic means of showing Mary’s expertise and dedication to her craft. Instead, both the heroine and her author demonstrate a lack of interest in this woman’s perilous state. Mary harangues the attending physician—the man she is determined to make her mentor—and Oliviera diffuses this tense, life-and-death scene with lengthy passages of exposition. The rest of the novel is similarly disappointing. Oliveira’s knowledge of social, military and medical history seems sound, but her skill as a writer does not match her skill as a researcher.

An interesting subject that would have benefited from better execution.