When I was visiting friends in Decorah, I spied Robin Oliveira’s novel My Name is Mary Sutter on a coffee table. I had finished already the YA novel Flora and Ulysses by Kate Di Camillo, which is a delightful magical realism story about how a squirrel acquires unusual powers after being sucked into a vacuum and has adventures with his human rescuer Flora. It was a book my mom recommended and it is an interesting cross between a straightforward novel and a graphic novel since some chapters are cartoons.

But enough of that! I picked up the Oliveira book listlessly and, after reading the back cover, opened to the first page. The book plunges immediately into a crisis because primip can’t deliver her baby and the surgeon has no idea what to do. Mary Sutter to the rescue with calm efficiency and expertise. I only read a few pages and then had to set it aside when my friend came down. The protagonist haunted me for the rest of the day: would she find a doctor willing to train her in surgery? I had to know and so downloaded the book on my kindle for the plane ride home.

Right now where I am in the book, the Civil War has begun and the first wounded are arriving at the Union Hotel after the battle of Manassas on July 21, 1861. Oliveira really makes the reader see how inadequately prepared everyone was for the wounded: not enough food, beds, nurses, doctors, supplies, medicines. Nothing clean. No sanitation. No ventilation. And no one had any idea how to do surgery; they just read from a manual.

I picked up the book, compelled by the heroine and her desire to learn in a man’s field. I also wondered if it might be a summer reading book for students in high school. I must continue reading and finish the novel before deciding. It might be good for rising eleventh graders since eleventh grade is the year of US history.

Robin Oliveira has a website where she describes how she researched primary materials to learn about medicine, surgery, midwifery, the Civil War.