Winter Sisters by Robin Oliveira
Viking/Penguin February 27 2018
Hist Fic/Saga/Thriller 416 pages
eBook galley provided by the publisher

From the New York Times bestselling author of My Name Is Mary Sutter comes a rich and compelling historical novel about the disappearance of two young girls after a cataclysmic blizzard, and what happens when their fate is discovered
New York, 1879: After an epic snow storm ravages the city of Albany, Dr. Mary Sutter, a former Civil War surgeon, begins a search for two little girls, the daughters of close friends killed by the storm who have vanished without a trace.
Mary’s mother and niece Elizabeth, who has been studying violin in Paris, return to Albany upon learning of the girls’ disappearance—but Elizabeth has another reason for wanting to come home, one she is not willing to reveal. Despite resistance from the community, who believe the girls to be dead, the family persists in their efforts to find the two sisters. When what happened to them is revealed, the uproar that ensues tears apart families, reputations, and even the social fabric of the city, exposing dark secrets about some of the most powerful of its citizens, and putting fragile loves and lives at great risk.
Winter Sisters is a propulsive new novel by the New York Times bestselling author of My Name Is Mary Sutter

Previous works by Robin Oliveira:
Read my review of I Always Loved You
Read my review of My Name Is Mary Sutter



When I was notified this book was available to review on NetGalley I jumped at the chance without much of a thought. I vividly remember the last two books from Robin Oliveira and how I enjoyed them very much and I knew whatever the book was it would be worth my sacrifice of taking the time to review it. I love the way the author writes -- it is fluid and melodic and keeps me intrigued from start to finish.

What was a pleasant surprise is that this novel brings back characters from My Name Is Mary Sutter, which was about the rarity of a woman becoming an accepted doctor in Civil War times. The story is now focused on Mary's extended family who suffer from an epic northeastern blizzard and the subsequent search for the two young girls who are missing since that storm. I may not have been fully prepared for the horrors of the tale as it progressed, but yet the sordidness of the story is handled delicately and with as much emotion as can be portrayed on paper through the well drawn characters. There is no need to go into a lengthy summary of this novel as you can surmise enough from the book description and I beg you to experience it firsthand as I recommend this for fans of historical fiction set in America.

Robin Oliveira is three for three in my book! I found Winter Sisters to be captivating, horrifying, historical and yet a timeless representation of the prejudices of man and the evil that exists among us. Seeking redemption is our only hope if you can survive the storm.



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I Always Loved You by Robin Oliveira (A Novel of Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt)
Viking Penguin February 2014
Hardcover 352 pages
Received a gorgeous hardcover from the publisher in exchange for this thoroughly honest review
Burton Book Review Rating: 5 big stars!

A novel of Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas’s great romance from the New York Times bestselling author of My Name Is Mary Sutter

The young Mary Cassatt never thought moving to Paris after the Civil War to be an artist was going to be easy, but when, after a decade of work, her submission to the Paris Salon is rejected, Mary’s fierce determination wavers. Her father is begging her to return to Philadelphia to find a husband before it is too late, her sister Lydia is falling mysteriously ill, and worse, Mary is beginning to doubt herself. Then one evening a friend introduces her to Edgar Degas and her life changes forever. Years later she will learn that he had begged for the introduction, but in that moment their meeting seems a miracle. So begins the defining period of her life and the most tempestuous of relationships.

In I Always Loved You, Robin Oliveira brilliantly re-creates the irresistible world of Belle Époque Paris, writing with grace and uncommon insight into the passion and foibles of the human heart.

(Click for my review of Robin Oliveira's first novel, My Name is Mary Sutter)

For readers who enjoy the style of Kelly O'Connor McNees (The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott) or Kathleen Grissom (The Kitchen House), or if you enjoyed Stephanie Cowell's Claude and Camille, this second novel by Robin Oliveira delivers a powerful punch with her beautiful prose. It's not so much the story in itself, it's the magnificent flow of words that ecompasses so much. I absolutely loved Robin Oliveira's first novel, and again here I noticed right away the style of writing- how Oliveira effortlessly portrays images, feelings and undertones of despair that captures what Belle Epoque Paris may have been all about in the artist's world. She's got me a believer of the relationship between Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt (I'm not going to spoil anything, you'll simply have to read it) and there is nothing in the entire novel I would have changed.

It is a story that evolves around the painters residing in Paris at the time, and one that is depressive in nature. If you can't embrace either of these two themes I can understand some readers being turned off by the tones of the book. If you have experienced loss, or subject to melancholy moods and can empathize with struggles of the creative person than I don't see any reason why you shouldn't adore this story of the struggles and loves of Mary and Edgar. And yet, it is so much more, as it includes their circle of friends and thus becomes a panoramic view of the ever-changing needs of society. It doesn't bounce between all the characters, but we do have a vivid look into Edouard Manet's and Berthe Morisot's lives along with the secondary characters (including Mary's family) who completely fill out this evocative and emotive novel of the late 1800's in Paris.

Looking at my status updates on Goodreads:
"Oh the prose!!!! 'You uttered them and they evanesced, but if you wrote them, they remained, though whether the written word was any more truthful than the spoken was a mystery to her.'"

and a touching scene (you had to be there!)
"Thank you, Monsieur Degas."
"Oh no. Not anymore. I am Edgar." Best scene ever

I simply loved the whole thing - the story and the writing, and will gladly read anything by Robin Oliveira for the rest of my life. I have a friend who wants to read this too, and my first thought is I need to give this to her, but I just can't let it go. I am going to have to read it again. And only maybe then can I share the joy and the heartbreak of the story. For now, it's just too personal, and it's mine to keep. Thank you to Robin Oliveira for touching my heart and putting together sentences the way that you do. Brava!

My Name is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira
Pub. Date: May 2010
Viking, 384pp
ISBN-13: 9780670021673
Review copy provided by the publisher, thank you!!
The Burton Review Rating:

In this stunning historical novel, Mary Sutter is a brilliant, headstrong midwife from Albany, New York, who dreams of becoming a surgeon. Determined to overcome the prejudices against women in medicine—and eager to run away from her recent heartbreak—Mary leaves home and travels to Washington, D.C. to help tend the legions of Civil War wounded. Under the guidance of William Stipp and James Blevens—two surgeons who fall unwittingly in love with Mary’s courage, will, and stubbornness in the face of suffering—and resisting her mother’s pleas to return home to help with the birth of her twin sister’s baby, Mary pursues her medical career in the desperately overwhelmed hospitals of the capital.

Every now and then you come across one of those stories that make you want to shout from the roof tops: THIS IS A FANTASTIC BOOK!!!!!!! This is one of those times for me. I was so totally emotionally tied in to this story as it swept from one person to another, yet it always came back to Mary Sutter. Set in the horrific days of America's Civil War, this is a timeless tale that is fraught with grief and emotion, where the entire undercurrent was despair throughout the novel. This is not for the faint of heart, but a novel that is meant to cling to your soul and not let go.

Mary Sutter is a young midwife whose sole desire is to become a surgeon. This was a job that men would normally do, and Mary wanted to learn from any of those more learned men. Finding someone to apprentice to is her chief task, and she ultimately forsakes her loving family in New York and seeks knowledge amongst those who are tending to the war heroes. The formidable Dorothea Dix called for nurses for this task, yet she has turned Mary away due to her young age which was not the required age of thirty. Mary is a resourceful, stubborn woman set on her goals and finds the medical world a place that she needs to be, especially to save the boys who resemble her brother and brother-in-law, as she searched for them among the masses of soldiers she encountered.

The author skillfully blends fiction with fact, as Lincoln steps in as a shadow of a figure in the story as well, and a young assistant John Hay who made for another intriguing storyline as the war rages on. But the story is set up to follow the members of Mary's family from her twin sister and her husband to a doctor that had also turned Mary away. Following Mary's younger brother Christian as he enlists in the war against the South was one of those moments when you felt something is going to happen to this wonderful young gentleman, but please don't let it happen.. and we follow Mary from New York to Washington to Virginia as she is stubborn in her quest, while along the way the author is so descriptive that you feel like you are watching an epic movie unfold before you. The war was not supposed to be so long, and it took its toll on everyone, from President Lincoln and his ineffective commanders to the once eager nurse Mary Sutter. Hope was not really an option anymore, as we read of the dead and dying, and the maimed. Life and death were intertwining shadows as the effects of the war ravaged the men and their beloved families, and Mary's included. Pitiful and tearful despair as impossible choices were given, and the decisions made carried grave consequences and regret. The hypocrisy of the war for the quest for freedom was also evident, and one wonders if we could ever learn. There were almost 625,000 casualties, averaging 599 deaths per day in this Civil War which lasted from 1861 to 1865. Such an astronomical number as I contemplate the effects of the war on our ancestors. And so this story gives life to that seemingly long ago time, as Mary's once happy family is reduced to shreds with not a single light at the end of the tunnel. An incredibly amazing gutwrenching novel that I simply could not put down.

A small critique from me regarding the writing was the repeated use of parentheses which seemed overly used in the first part of the book: (to demonstrate a point). Otherwise, the writing felt skilled and highly steeped with the undercurrents of potential sorrows that still managed to pull at my heart as the author intermingles her characters with ease and talent that predicts wonderful things to come for this writer. There is also a lot of medical information as Mary and her peers try to discern the best ways to help their patients, as well as a lot of surgeries and blood. This is such a fantastic debut novel for Robin Oliveira that I have to wonder what next could come from her imaginative and talented pen? I will impatiently for another page turner that takes me into another time and place but manages to keep my soul there while the written story is long over. Those readers who enjoyed The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott will enjoy this one as it packs a lot of punch into the harrowing images of the Civil War, yet it is not done in such a way to shock the reader into pity for the characters of the story. Instead, it is done with a subtle torture to your sensitivities. If you think you would enjoy a Civil War era novel, pick this one up. This would be your favorite, in a masochistic sort of way.

I am reading My Name is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira and I am really enjoying this book! It smacks of the wonderful writing I had enjoyed in The Kitchen House and The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott.

For those lucky readers who are wondering what to pick up next, put this on your list. It's available now.

An enthralling historical novel about a young woman's struggle to become a doctor during the Civil War

In this stunning first novel, Mary Sutter is a brilliant, head­strong midwife from Albany, New York, who dreams of becoming a surgeon. Determined to overcome the prejudices against women in medicine-and eager to run away from her recent heartbreak- Mary leaves home and travels to Washington, D.C. to help tend the legions of Civil War wounded. Under the guidance of William Stipp and James Blevens-two surgeons who fall unwittingly in love with Mary's courage, will, and stubbornness in the face of suffering-and resisting her mother's pleas to return home to help with the birth of her twin sister's baby, Mary pursues her medical career in the desperately overwhelmed hospitals of the capital.


Like Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain and Robert Hicks's The Widow of the South, My Name Is Mary Sutter powerfully evokes the atmosphere of the period. Rich with historical detail (including marvelous depictions of Lincoln, Dorothea Dix, General McClellan, and John Hay among others), and full of the tragedies and challenges of wartime, My Name Is Mary Sutter is an exceptional novel. And in Mary herself, Robin Oliveira has created a truly unforgettable heroine whose unwavering determination and vulnerability will resonate with readers everywhere.