Lilac Girls 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 Planation 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.
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I have been looking forward to Sunflower Sisters since I found out that there will be a third installment to the Lilac Girls . I had loved the two previous books: The Lilac Girls, The Lost Roses . I did enjoy Sunflower Sisters but not how I thought that I would. There were few exciting parts throughout the book, but they were parts in the book where I felt it was dragging on and did not capture my attention. Sunflower Sisters were told point of view from three women. I tend to enjoy when a book is told from multiple points of view, giving you a chance to know each character better. There was one character I didn't like in this book, Anne-May, and it could be because she wasn't a character you could enjoy. I didn't particularly appreciate reading from her point of view, and it could be of the way it was written, or might because I did not like her. It did not change how I felt about the character.
However, I did enjoy reading from Jemma and Georgey's point of view. I felt more going in, and their storylines were more exciting and easier to get than Anne-May. Those two went through so much. Jemma, my heart broke from her every single time, and I hoped that she would find a way to escape from it. I had read books that took time in the war multiple times before, but never the one that took place in the Civil War, so that was something new for me. When I read from Jemma and Georgey's point of view, that's when it was hard for me to put the book down because I wanted to see what would happen next. I think that the books' descriptions were terrific, and I felt as I was being transported there, along with everyone.
In general, I didn’t think that Sunflower Sisters was a bad book. There were quite a few good parts, and I couldn't pull myself away from them. For me, it wasn't what I was excepting the book to be. It was different from her other books. If you love historical fiction and are interested in the Civil War era, I would check this book out. Sunflower Sisters is worth giving a chance to.
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