Sunflower Sisters is the third book in the Lilac Girls or Woolsey-Ferriday series by Martha Hall Kelly. I have read all three books in order, but this book can be read as a standalone. Since I’ve read all of the books though I’ll give you a little feedback!

Lilac Girls was highly recommended to me by a friend who knows my love of WWI historical fiction. I thought this book was done so well. I loved the story of Caroline Ferriday, an American philanthropist who helped young girls released from Ravensbruck concentration camp. Her story has stuck with me since reading it. This was a 5-star read for me.

Lost Roses is set during WWI, and follows the story of Caroline Ferriday’s mother, Eliza who goes to Russia with a friend who is the cousin of the Romanov’s. When they arrive, Austria declares war on Serbia and the Russian Imperial Empire. Although I don’t read much WWI historical fiction, I still this story. This was a 4-star read for me.

Sunflower Sisters is set during the Civil War and is told from first-person perspectives of the three main characters. Georgey – an abolitionist nurse, Jemma – a slave, and Anne-May – a plantation owner. I really loved Georgey, and how she followed her passion for nursing instead of marrying someone and living a society lifestyle. Jemma is such a strong character who works as a slave for Anne-May. When Anne-May tries to sell her, Jemma finds a way to escape and join the Union Army. Anne-May is left behind to run the plantation when her husband and brother go to war. She joins a secret Southern spy network, which leads her to the fate she deserves.

Martha Hall Kelly does a great job in all three of these books by intertwining the lives of her main characters. This book is a great example of historical Civil War fiction as it takes us all throughout the US from southern plantations, slave auctions, battlefields, draft riots, war-torn New York City, and Gettysburg.

Thank you NetGalley and Ballantine/Random House Publishing Group for an eARC in exchange for my honest review. I had listened to the first two books on audiobook though and since it’s a multi-narrator cast (which I love), I decided to wait to listen to the audiobook rather than read the eBook I received. The audiobook has a great cast of narrators including Cassandra Campbell, Saskia Maarleveld, Shayna Small, and Jenna Lamia. I highly recommend all three books in this series on audiobook.

Wow! This was my first book by this author and I can’t wait to read the other books in this series. I liked how complicated and realistic the characters were, and that the book didn’t shy away from this horrific time in our nation’s history. This book was hard to put down, and I would definitely recommend it to historical fiction lovers. I received a free copy of this book from netgalley and the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

🌻 Sunflower Sister🌻

The Sunflower Sisters was my first book by @marthakelly1 and I guarantee it won’t be my last. She writes beautifully. The Sunflower Sisters is written in 3 POVs: Georgy Woolsey, one of seven sisters, Jemma, a slave from Maryland owned by the despicable Anne-May. Georgy was so intelligent and frank and became a nurse to take care of the Union soldiers during the Civil War. Jemma is the POV that opens the book. The thngs this young girl and her family endured at the hands of her owner was nothing short of traumatic, violent, and heartbreaking. I was driven to tears many times while reading Jemma’s POV.

Anne-May-I despised her as a person but I appreciated her POV as a slave owner. The lengths she would go to for money and just to be bossy and lazy amazied me. , She took on a lover while her husband was at war, using things from his letters home to share with her lover and the Confederacy.

The Sunflower Sister covers the entirety of the Civil war and was so accurate and flowed perfectly with each POV! I have great respect for Martha Kelly and the amount of work and research she put into this book.
Take the time to read the author’s notes at the end of this one. This is where she describees how she came to tell this story. Martha Kelly desribes her connection to Caroline Ferriday, great aunt to Eliza Woolsey one of the 7 sisters. Since this is my first book I didn’t know this would be the last about the connections to the Ferriday family now I am so complelled to read them all....asap.

I rate this ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ for beauutiful prose, excellent research and for providing insight into both the slave owner and the slave’s lives. I smiiled, I cried, but ultimately adored this book. Thank you @Ballantinebooks @marthakelly1 and @suzyapprovedbooktours for my copy of the book to review!!

Sunflower Sisters by Martha Hall Kelly is the third book in the Lilac Girls series based on the true story of the Ferriday/Woolsey family. This book (and each of them) can be read as a stand alone.

Sunflower Sisters is set during the Civil War and is told from three different points of view. Jemma, a slave girl is owned by Anne-May, a tobacco plantation owner in Maryland. Georgy Woolsey is a wealthy Northerner who aids the Union Army.

This book was lengthy but worth it to establish the characters and their experiences during this time period.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine Books for a digital ARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

Stunning, heartbreaking and fabulous. I could not put this beautiful book down. I did a buddy read with several Bookstagrammers and we all agree this book is AMAZING. The research alone was beyond impressive and what I look for in historical fiction. Martha Hall Kelly writes with heart and it comes through in the pages of each amazing character.
An absolute favorite book of 2021 and in many years. I'll recommend this one over and over.

~~~I received an ARC of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review~~~

What an inspiring and delightful book Sunflower Sisters is! I have not read Martha Hall Kelly's other two novels in this series yet (which wasn't necessary to follow the story), and I cannot wait to! This is a well written story following three women through the Civil War living in Maryland and New York City. The first is Georgy, a wealthy female abolitionist from a prominent NYC family, the second is Jemma, a young female black slave, and the third is Anne-May, a southern woman who inherited a Maryland plantation and is Jemma's owner. This book offers three very different perspectives of the Civil War. Each story is unique and I think helps the reader understand the war better from all perspectives. Overall, this is a story of survival, perseverance, abolitionism, feminism, friendship, family, love- and, of course, war. This is a wonderfully crafted story and I highly recommend it. I look forward to reading more of Martha Hall Kelly's novels in the near future.

Every word Martha Hall Kelly writes is practical perfection! I have loved her other historical fiction offerings, and this was no exception. Sunflower Sisters has earned a spot on my personal bookshelf!

I was very excited to receive this book for review. Civil War historical fiction is right up my alley. Too bad this one was a disappointment .

We have the story of three ladies: one a nurse, one a slave and one a plantation owner. This book is about how their lives enter twine. Unfortunately all three characters fell flat and the storyline felt disjointed.

I felt like the author set out to write a Scarlett O’Hara character with the plantation owner and failed. Scarlett had depth and for all her flaws you still wanted to pull for her. There is absolutely redeeming about our character here.

The nurse would have been a great character if we had explored what it was like to be a nurse during this time. However, the author spends all this time giving us her back story as to her training, but then the nursing part becomes so minor that it could have been left out completely.

I also found the three main characters and some of the drama in the book to be very stereotypical, which I did not like, Like them or not, I want my characters to have depth and not just be stereotypical good or bad.

All in all this book just did not work well for me. Thank you NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

While Sunflower Sisters is the last book in the Ferriday family trilogy, it can definitely be read as a stand alone novel. But once you read it, you’ll definitely want to read the other 2 titles, Lost Roses and Lilac Girls, just as I do!

Sunflower Sisters is set amidst the Civil War, a historical fiction time point that I’ve read and love to visit back on occasionally. The story is told from 3 perspectives; abolitionist, enslaved, and enslaver POV’s, and the linear timeline flows well with the different POV’s.

The Woolsey women are staunch abolitionists and determined to make a difference in society. I admired these women and their sharp, intelligent tenacity. Georgeanna Woolsey was a pioneer in her time, a battlefield nurse setting precedence for women in the forefront of medical care.

Anne-May is despicable and sadly probably very representative of many plantation owners.

I was rooting for Jemma throughout the entirety of the novel and never lost hope for her freedom and life beyond slave plantation life.

This is a must read for all Historical Fiction buffs, and beware, it will send you down the Google rabbit hole!

Sunflower Sisters is the third book of the Lilac Girls series, which follows the strong female protagonists of the Ferriday/Woolsey family. Although it is a “series”, they work great as stand-alones. The story follows three different women throughout the civil war. Georgy Woolsey is a fearless, determined woman from a well-known New York family who works as a U.S. Union Army nurse. Jemma is a smart, loving girl who is a slave at Peeler Plantation, a tobacco plantation, in Maryland. Anne-May Wilson Watson is the nasty, uneducated mistress of Peeler Plantation who begins to work as a Confederate spy. The stories intersect when Georgy and her mother are working as nurses as Gettysburg and meet Jemma, who has been serving in the Army as a drummer “boy”.
Martha Kelly Hall always tells the story from the viewpoint of two “heroes” and one “villain”. I love that she incorporates the perspective of the villain. Although we continue to dislike them (rightfully so), it humanizes them and allows the readers to connect with all three characters.
An impressive thing about this story is that it is based on the real letters from the Woolsey family. This is a real family from history full of incredible women with outstanding achievements. Highly recommend reading the author’s note – it is just as interesting as the novel itself.
This story highlights how the bonds of family and love can help get someone through the greatest hardships and atrocities. I am sad to see this series come to an end but look forward to Martha Kelly Hall’s future work.

I received this novel as an advanced reader copy from net galley. I truly enjoy I’ll historical fiction novels bye this author. I find there are not many recent historical fiction novels about the Civil War so this was refreshing. The character of Georgey is passionate and inspiring. Highly recommend!

Thoughts:

Martha Hall Kelly is an auto buy author for me when it comes to historical fiction so I was very excited when this book tour with Suzy Approved Book Tours came up! It has been awhile since I read Lilac Girls and Lost Roses so I was a little nervous about not remembering everything. Thankfully this is one of those books in a series that can be read as a standalone, and you will not feel lost.

In this story we get three points of view from three very different characters. First we have Georgey Woolsey who is one of seven daughters of Richard Woolsey of New York. Her family fights for slaves to be free and Georgey and Eliza work as nurses on the battlefront during the war. The only thing that bothered me about Georgey's character was that she was wishy washy when it came to Frank Bacon, a childhood friend who loved her. I could go on about this, but I don't want to contain any spoilers.

Next we have Jemma who lives with her family on the Peeler Plantation in Maryland owned by Anne-May. Jemma is forced to be at Anne-May's beck and call all day every day. The way she was treated had me cringing multiple times. When new slaves are brought to the plantation, and Jemma's mom takes them under her wing, the green eyed monster comes out. Jemma chills out when one of the girls ends up pregnant by one of Anne-May's goonies. The time to escape is getting closer and closer because when that baby is born Anne-May will sell it. Jemma's chapters made me hold my breath more than the other two ladies.

Last but not least is awful Anne-May. She is left in charge of the plantation when her husband goes off to war, but instead of tending to the tobacco in the field she starts an affair with a store owner in town. Together they are playing a dangerous game of keeping a book of top secret information they hear at parties. If discovered they would be hanged without question. We do get to meet her mother in a few chapters, a vile woman, and it explains a lot about why Anne-May is the way she is.

I love getting different POV's because I think it really brings a lot to the story, and we get a more in depth look at the characters. Reading about these three characters had me wondering how the author was going to tie them all together. All I have to say is thank goodness for the Woolsey family. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and if you're a fan of historical fiction you will too.

Book Rating: 5/5
Wine Pairing: Penfolds Bin 9 Cabernet Sauvignon 2014

Beautifully written. Heartwarming, heartbreaking, full of love and sadness. Such a tragic yet beautiful story.

An epic and enthralling conclusion to Martha Hall Kelly’s Lilac girls series, based on the real lives of three generations of Woolsey women. In Sunflower sisters, we get a first hand look at women’s Civil war experience: from Georgeanna “Georgey,” a Union nurse from a prominent Northern family who served at Gettysburg, to Anne-May, a Maryland plantation owner’s wife struggling to survive the economic turmoil in the South and to Jemma, a slave woman who escapes to the north but is forced to leave her family behind. Full of great historical detail, especially what life during the war was like for the women left at home in the North and the South, the horrors of the battlefields and the injustices endured by those enslaved. I loved the Woolsey women - Georgey is one of seven sisters, all of whom were social activists. Georgey herself wanted to establish a formal nursing school for women, modelled after the work of Elizabeth Blackwell (the first woman Doctor). Great on audio - a full cast production with the supremely talented Cassandra Campbell and Saskia Maarleveld. HIGHLY recommend!

Featuring the prominent Farraday family from her other historical novels, this takes place in the south after slaves were freed but before they were treated as people. Filled with hate, greed and deviousness, the plantation owners are awful to their former slaves. The family of former slaves are tight knit and want to stay together but are faced with cruelty and crime and are not yet free to be.

I loved the "Sunflower Sisters" by Martha Hall Kelly!
Another wonderful historical fiction novel by Martha Kelly. This time she takes us back to the Civil War and paints a realistic historical tapestry...although horrible at times. I won't hesitate to buy any of this author's books.

I love historical fiction, so I was excited to jump into this novel, told from the perspectives of 3 women in different roles during the civil war — a nurse for the union army, a young enslaved girl, and her mistress. At the start, I was pulled in and very interested in the women in this book. Unfortunately the book really stalled out for me around 20% and it took me over a month to push through before I finally decided to put it down around 60%. It just really didn’t keep my interest and it could have been at least 100 pages shorter. (It’s over 500 pages) I can’t quite put a finger on where it lost me, since the writing was good and the story was compelling. I think maybe the plot was just too slow for me. That said, if you liked Martha Hall Kelly’s first two books in the series (though they can be read as stand-alones), Lilac Girls and Lost Roses, you might enjoy this one! It just wasn’t quite there for me.

A very well told story about the Civil War and abolitionist. Seemed historically accurate. A reminder of how difficult life was for those enslaved on plantations and how hard it was to even learn to read. Really well written.

Sunflower SIsters is the third and final book in the trilogy about Caroline Farriday's family. The books are based on real people and the US civil war. The story is told from three persepectives; Georgy a wealthy dertermined woman who helps nurse the soldiers, Jemma , a slave and Anna Mae a slave owner. Well written ,you will remember these characters after you finish reading the book !
Thanks to Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Following her bestselling and critically acclaimed novels LILAC GIRLS and LOST ROSES, Martha Hall Kelly returns with SUNFLOWER SISTERS, a riveting work of historical fiction set during the Civil War and starring Caroline Ferriday’s ancestor, Georgeanna Woolsey.

One of seven accomplished and independent Woolsey sisters, Georgeanna has never been one for fancy dresses and whirlwind courtships. As the United States starts to divide over slavery --- with the Woolseys standing firmly on the side of abolition --- she sees an opportunity to serve her country as a nurse. Even better, she will be training under the esteemed and groundbreaking Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, America's first female doctor. Although her family believes that women should be educated and well-rounded, able to stand on their own alongside or even without husbands, the nursing industry has long been dominated by men. And aside from Georgy’s sister Eliza, most of her relatives and friends find the idea of women acting as nurses to be laughable and unimaginable.

Meanwhile, in the South, we meet Jemma, a 16-year-old slave who lives and works on the Peeler Plantation in Maryland, a costly endeavor run by Anne-May Watson, a cruel and greedy woman. Jemma is fortunate to have been taught to read by her previous mistress, Anne-May’s aunt. But although Anne-May has no trouble using Jemma for notetaking and letter-writing, she is equally quick to abuse her for the slightest infraction, no doubt jealous of her intelligence. Still, Jemma counts her blessings. She lives and works alongside her Ma and Pa; her twin sister, Patience, works only a short walk away at an indigo farm; and the mistress’s husband, Fergus, is an abolitionist who counters his wife’s cruelty whenever he can.

Kelly repeats the three-character structure that has made her novels so enthralling, and in Anne-May, she hearkens back to the cast of LILAC GIRLS by including a true villain among her heroic leading ladies. Anne-May sees her slaves --- and any slaves who have been freed by others --- as lesser beings than her and her white friends and family members. Her external cruelty --- beatings, pinches, theft --- is matched only by the wickedness of her interior monologue. She can spin the actions of any person into something evil, lazy or stupid...and, when it comes to her slaves, often all three. But she even acts the villain in her personal life: she openly dislikes her husband, flirts with other men, and struggles with a serious snuff addiction that makes her erratic and moody.

As the Civil War kicks off, Georgy completes her training and becomes a war nurse, all the while planning to open her own nursing school for women using the knowledge she gains firsthand on the job. As her brother-in-law and former beau head to war, she thrives in the action, passing along notes from the battlefront to her family and fighting her own war for respect among the male nurses and doctors working alongside her. Though her efforts are always focused on saving soldiers and helping women and children when she can, she remains steadfastly devoted to the whole reason for the war: putting an end to the cruel inhumanity of the institution of slavery once and for all.

Across the North-South border, the Peeler Plantation sees Fergus head to war, fighting with the North, as Anne-May’s brother signs up to fight for the Confederacy. As a family residing in a border state, the Watsons are not the only family torn apart by the war, but by juxtaposing Anne-May’s wickedness against Jemma’s fight for human rights, Kelly ramps up the tension that comes with brother(-in-law) fighting against brother(-in-law). Unfortunately for Jemma and her family, without Fergus’ interventions, Anne-May grows colder and more abusive, even as her own ambitions pull her further and further into the war --- and grave danger. Propelled by her greed and insatiable appetite for luxury, she unwittingly becomes a Confederate spy, with Jemma, who is twice as smart as she is and far more subtle, writing down every message and taking stock of her mistress’s wrongdoings.

The best moment in every Martha Hall Kelly book is when the three storylines --- each so perfectly written as to be their own novel --- converge. In SUNFLOWER SISTERS, she first brings together Jemma, now a runaway slave, and Georgy as her nurse. Their pairing is, without a doubt, one of the most satisfying I have read in any of Kelly’s books. With their convergence, the novel takes on an even faster pace, full of battle scenes, Gettysburg, espionage and, of course, the dangerous passages of the slaves and those who aided them in their journeys north. With callous Anne-May causing mayhem and disaster in the background, the fight for abolition is never so clear. And although this is a detailed and lengthy book (528 pages!), Kelly never once misses the mark, giving her characters ample room to grow (or, in Anne-May’s case, spiral out of control) and allowing her readers to fully immerse themselves in the Civil War and its aftermath, both on the battlefield and at home.

When I read LILAC GIRLS, I was astounded by Kelly’s ability to live in the head of her villain and write out her very worst thoughts without ever endorsing or excusing them herself. In SUNFLOWER SISTERS, she has done it again with Anne-May. Whether describing Anne-May’s hatred for her slaves or her inability to see beyond the plantation that brings her wealth, dresses and snuff, Kelly never shies away from revealing the depths of slaveowners’ prejudices. With Jemma’s chapters following close behind, the dissonance and lack of humanity take on a sharp edge, one that brings the war right to your living room or reading chair and rings eerily close to our current political and racial landscape.

As always, I am blown away by Kelly’s attention to detail and her love for the Woolsey family. She has cited real historical documents in her writing of Georgeanna, but she also brings to life small factual details that immerse you fully in the time period: the tension of wondering which states will stay in the Union, shocking news from the battlefront, the confusion of battles having different names from either side, and even the need for female nurses to give up their hoop skirts to avoid knocking over limited medical supplies.

Readers of LILAC GIRLS and LOST ROSES will note some fun Easter eggs here. But because Georgeanna is a more distant relative of Caroline’s, I believe that even newcomers will find something to love in this one. SUNFLOWER SISTERS is a refreshing change from the wealth of World War II novels and a chance to examine our country’s history with the benefit of Martha Hall Kelly’s clear gaze, careful precision and all-encompassing love for the richness of women’s stories.