I really enjoyed this book, and towards the end I couldn't put it down. Mary Sutter is a fantastic heroine — strong willed, talented, determined, flawed. I loved her. This book is very much about the Civil War, but it's also about the history of medicine and the struggles of ambitious women in an exceptionally patriarchal society. It's also about love, in its many forms.

The writing is not perfect. It's sometimes overdone — either overly literal or too self-consciously "literary". But the flaws were relatively minor and didn't detract much from what is, essentially, a great story with wonderful central characters. It is Robin Oliveira's first novel, and I look forward to reading more by this author.