About:
'Sunflower Sisters' by Martha Hall Kelly is the third novel in the author's series, following the Woolsey and Ferriday women through the years of the American Civil War. The story intertwines the lives of George Woolsey, an abolitionist, Jemma, an enslaved girl, and Anne May, Jemma's owner. The plot is rich in historical detail, portraying the courage and determination of the characters amidst the challenges of the Civil War era. The narrative alternates between inspiring women striving for freedom and corrupt abusers of power, providing a captivating and educational read about remarkable individuals often overlooked in history books.
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Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings
The book contains sensitive topics related to slavery, abuse, and the brutal realities of war, which may be triggering for some readers.
From The Publisher:
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Martha Hall Kelly's million-copy bestseller Lilac Girls introduced readers to Caroline Ferriday. Now, in Sunflower Sisters , Kelly tells the story of Ferriday's ancestor Georgeanna Woolsey, a Union nurse during the Civil War whose calling leads her to cross paths with Jemma, a young enslaved girl who is sold off and conscripted into the army, and Anne-May Wilson, a Southern plantation mistress whose husband enlists.
"An exquisite tapestry of women determined to defy the molds the world has for them."-Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Before We Were Yours
Georgeanna "Georgey" Woolsey isn't meant for the world of lavish parties and the demure attitudes of women of her stature. So when war ignites the nation, Georgey follows her passion for nursing during a time when doctors considered women on the battlefront a bother. In proving them wrong, she and her sister Eliza venture from New York to Washington, D.C., to Gettysburg and witness the unparalleled horrors of slavery as they become involved in the war effort.
In the South, Jemma is enslaved on the Peeler Plantation in Maryland, where she lives with her mother and father. Her sister, Patience, is enslaved on the plantation next door, and both live in fear of LeBaron, an abusive overseer who tracks their every move. When Jemma is sold by the cruel plantation mistress Anne-May at the same time the Union army comes through, she sees a chance to finally escape-but only by abandoning the family she loves.
Anne-May is left behind to run Peeler Plantation when her husband joins the Union army and her cherished brother enlists with the Confederates. In charge of the household, she uses the opportunity to follow her own ambitions and is drawn into a secret Southern network of spies, finally exposing herself to the fate she deserves.
Inspired by true accounts, Sunflower Sisters provides a vivid, detailed look at the Civil War experience, from the barbaric and inhumane plantations, to a war-torn New York City, to the horrors of the battlefield. It's a sweeping story of women caught in a country on the brink of collapse, in a society grappling with nationalism and unthinkable racial cruelty, a story still so relevant today.
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