ENEMY WOMEN - Softcover

Jiles, Paulette

3.75

7,809 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007291841 ISBN 13: 9780007291847

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2008

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COLD MOUNTAIN meets CHARLOTTE GRAY when a young woman, denounced as a spy, escapes from a Civil War prison to find her way home. Missouri, 1865. Adair Colley and her family have managed to hide from the bloody Armageddon of the American Civil War, but finally even their remote mountain farm cannot escape the plundering greed of the Union militia. Her house is burnt, her father beaten and dragged away. With fierce determination, Adair sets out after him on foot. So begins an extraordinary voyage which will see Adair herself denounced as a Confederate spy and thrown in jail. Here she falls passionately in love with her Union interrogator, who helps her escape. Braving uncounted dangers with wit, ingenuity, and an outrageous courage, she struggles to return home, to reunite her family, and -- against all odds -- to find her love again, this time as a free woman. Ecstatic reviewers have compared this muscular, vivid novel to Cold Mountain, unanimously calling this the better read. With cinematic sweep and a galloping pace, ENEMY WOMEN introduces readers to the most memorable heroine of many years. You will lose your heart to Adair Colley, and to this magnificent book.

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Review:

Enemy Women, the outstanding first novel by poet Paulette Jiles, leads us into new terrain, both geographic and historical, in the war between the states. Set in the Missouri Ozarks during the Civil War, Jiles's story focuses on the trying times of 18-year-old heroine Adair Colley. When a group of renegade Union militiamen attacks the Colley home, stealing family possessions, burning everything down, and taking away her father--an apolitical judge--Adair gathers the remnants of her clothes and mounts a rescue effort. Unfortunately, she is falsely accused of being a Confederate spy, a charge that lands her in a squalid women's prison run by a decent commandant embarrassed by his post. After he helps her escape, the two agree to seek out one another after the war; their separate, harrowing journeys and the evolution of each character throughout make for breathtaking action and powerful writing. Each chapter of Enemy Women begins with excerpts from historical testimony about this terrible period in the Civil War, when marauding soldiers pillaged and murdered whole families and communities at will. These documents add depth and resonance to Jiles's remarkable narrative. --Tom Keogh

From the Back Cover:

For the Colleys of southeastern Missouri, the War between the States is a plague that threatens devastation, despite the family’s avowed neutrality. For eighteen-year-old Adair Colley, it is a nightmare that tears apart her family and forces her and her sisters to flee. The treachery of a fellow traveler, however, brings about her arrest, and she is caged with the criminal and deranged in a filthy women’s prison.

But young Adair finds that love can live even in a place of horror and despair. Her interrogator, a Union major, falls in love with her and vows to return for her when the fighting is over. Before he leaves for battle, he bestows upon her a precious gift: freedom.

Now an escaped "enemy woman," Adair must make her harrowing way south buoyed by a promise . . . seeking a home and a family that may be nothing more than a memory.

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