REVIEW:

I really wish Sunshine Sisters wasn’t labeled as “Lilac Girls #3” in some places. Or “Woolsey-Ferriday (chronological) Book 1” in others. Or “Woolsey-Ferriday (published order) Book 3” in still more. Just stop the madness! You don’t need to read all the books in any order or at all to pick them up independently.

But since I have actually picked each of them up, here’s my experience with Martha Hall Kelly’s three books in her flower motif “series.”

Lilac Girls - Wow, I’m enjoying this more than I thought I would given my WW2-story fatigue. She’s a gifted writer! I look forward to the next one.

Lost Roses - Okay, this is about WW1. Let’s give this library copy a go. After about 20 pages, I just don’t care enough to go on. I’m out.

Sunflower Sisters - Hmm, the U.S. Civil War you say? I haven’t read a book about that in awhile. Let’s do it. What?! It’s 528 pages?! Why?! Ain’t nobody got time for that, but now I have the darn thing so I feel obligated. I start begrudgingly. Wait… this is quite compelling. 528 pages later… that went fast!

Allllll that to say Sunflower Sisters really is an excellent read for historical fiction fans. Chapters are dedicated to the first-person perspectives of three main characters: Georgy - a very noble abolitionist nurse, Jemma - a slave with gumption and guts, and Anne-May - a plantation owner, Confederate spy, and true baddie.

The story takes readers from slave auctions to battlefields, from draft riots to audiences with Abraham Lincoln. While these aspects of history have been well-covered before, Martha Hall Kelly has written characters that are compelling enough to keep readers engaged… for all 500+ pages.

I received an advance print copy for review from Ballantine Books / Random House Publishing Group via NetGalley. Those who prefer the audiobook format are in for a treat though, as the multiple narrator cast includes some of the best: Cassandra Campbell, Jenna Lamia (my all-time favorite), Shayna Small, and Saskia Maarleveld.

PUBLISHER SYNOPSIS:

Lilac Girls, the 1.7-million-copy bestselling novel by Martha Hall Kelly, introduced readers to Caroline Ferriday, an American philanthropist who helped young girls released from Ravensbruck concentration camp. Now, in Sunflower Sisters, Kelly tells the story of her ancestor Georgeanna Woolsey, a Union nurse who joins the war effort during the Civil War, and how her calling leads her to cross paths with Jemma, a young enslaved girl who is sold off and conscripted into the army, and Ann-May Wilson, a southern plantation mistress whose husband enlists.

Georgeanne "Georgey" Woolsey isn't meant for the world of lavish parties and demure attitudes of women of her stature. So when the war ignites the nation, Georgey follows her passion for nursing during a time when doctors considered women a bother on the battlefront. 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.