What's Ashley Reading: Lincoln Edition

My latest read took me out of the realm of YA (where I've been hiding and feeling awfully cozy) into the harsh realities of medical life during the Civil War.  My Name is Mary Sutter, by Robin Oliveira, is a historical fiction about a young midwife who longs to become a surgeon.  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.

Horrific is right! I feel like I am now fully qualified to perform leg amputations, having lived through several--in painstaking detail-- with Mary Sutter.  I can also deliver babies, saw a woman in half, and tell you the properties of a malarial stool sample.  But beyond the medical aspects, which are so organic to the story and desires of the protagonist that they never feel like textbook excerpts, the story is more about the quest of a young woman to fulfill her dreams (and, perhaps, to escape her past).

This story has a bit of everything: romance, historical facts, gory details, superb irony, a protagonist you want to root for, and an ending that satisfies--though silhouetted against deep tragedy.  I especially liked the complex relationships: Mary and her mother, Mary and her mentor, Mary and her twin sister, her twin sister's husband, the man who wouldn't teach her... All of these relationships are dynamic and REAL; nothing felt forced or historicized.  

The writing is beautiful, full of rich descriptions and meaningful dialogue, but never feeling heavy or self-conscious.  

Overall, I'd recommend this book to anyone who can handle a little bit of blood and gore, who can enjoy a headstrong and intelligent female protagonist, and who has a fascination with the Civil War.