Sunflower Sisters by Martha Hall Kelly

July 15, 2021

Sunflower Sisters by Martha Hall Kelly

A girl from a wealthy Northern family isn't content to sit home and knit socks for the Union soldiers, so she finagles her way into a nursing program. She finds out that nurses are treated like shit by the doctors and orderlies at the Army hospitals. She ends up starting her own nursing program. Meanwhile, a slave escapes from a brutally cruel owner and winds up hiding out at the rich girl's fmily's house up north. The owner sends a bounty hunter to recapture the slave while the rich family does their best to help.

The story is told from three POV's: the plantation owner, the slave, and the nurse.

Nothing new here - inhumanly cruel plantation owner with absolutely NO redeeming qualities whips and tortures her slaves. Female slave is brutally abused and escapes when she gets the chance. Plantation owner will stop at nothing to find the slave and drag her back to the plantation. Pretty typical depictions of both slave and plantation owner.

The stark descriptions of Army hospitals and the way nurses were treated were more interesting than the rest of the book. This is the third book in the author's Woolsey-Ferriday series, following the women from an actual family. It was WAY too long - at over 500 pages, it needed a good editor to chop out about 200 pages. Not nearly as good as the previous two books.