Sunflower Sisters cover art

Sunflower Sisters

A Novel

Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Sunflower Sisters

By: Martha Hall Kelly
Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld, Shayna Small, Jenna Lamia, Cassandra Campbell, Martha Hall Kelly
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £16.99

Buy Now for £16.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Martha Hall Kelly’s million-copy bestseller Lilac Girls introduced readers to Caroline Ferriday. Now, in Sunflower Sisters, 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 Anne-May Wilson, a Southern plantation mistress whose husband enlists.

“An exquisite tapestry of women determined to defy the molds the world has for them.”—Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Before We Were Yours

Georgeanna “Georgey” Woolsey isn’t meant for the world of lavish parties and the demure attitudes of women of her stature. So when war ignites the nation, Georgey follows her passion for nursing during a time when doctors considered women on the battlefront a bother. 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.
Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Women's Fiction Fiction War Civil War Civil War Fiction

Listeners also enjoyed...

Lost Roses cover art
The Physician's Daughter cover art
Invisible by Day cover art
The Indigo Girl cover art
Wild, Beautiful, and Free cover art
The Abolitionist's Daughter cover art
America's First Daughter cover art
The Covenant of Water cover art
The German Wife cover art
The Road Beyond Ruin cover art
A Distant Horizon cover art
The Secret Vow cover art
Band of Sisters cover art
A Most Unsuitable Match cover art
The Nature of Fragile Things cover art
The Last Green Valley cover art
All stars
Most relevant
It's not often you are a few pages into the story and you realise you're reading something you won't forget the name It begins with the most beautiful narration a masterpiece The story in inspiring compelling amazing A wealth of characters During the authors note learnt It was a continuation of the character from Lilac Girls the sheer time and brilliance that would have entailed that process Hopefully this becomes best seller because It deserves recognition

An amazing story

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

A must read for lovers of historic fiction. Amazing development of characters and great use of different narrators for separate narratives

Exceptional!!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.