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 Ann-May Wilson, a Southern plantation mistress whose husband enlists. Georgeanna "Georgy" Woolsey isn't meant for the world of lavish parties and the demure attitudes of women of her status. So when war ignites the nation. Georgy follows her passion for nursing during at ime when doctors considered women on the battlefront a bother. In proving them wrong, Georgy 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 Perler Plantation in Maryland, where she lives with her mother and father. Jemma's 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. Now in charge of the household, she uses the opportunity to follow her ambitions and is drawn into troubles of her own, as she works to sabotage Northern soldiers, 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 New York City struggling to stay united, 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 relevant today. -- From dust jacket.