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Enemy Women: A Novelby Paulette Jiles |
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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.
From Amazon.com 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
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Enemy Women -  |
Enemy Women: A Novel Review |
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Enemy Women by Paulette Jiles is set during the Civil War in Missouri. Missouri was a split state during the war with the northern part for the Union and the southern for the Rebel cause. Enemy Women is set in the southeast up to and including St. Louis. Any one who lives in St. Louis and is familiar with the downtown area will appreciate all the street names and locations mentioned. For example, did you know there was a women's prison near where the Cardinal ball park stands today?
This novel follows a young lady, Adair whose family is torn apart by the war even though her father isn't politicial. Her father is taken prisoner and Adair and her two sisters set out on foot to find him after their home is partially burned by the Union Milita. Adair gets separated and sent to prison herself in St. Louis where she meets a young union major and falls in love. I can't tell you the rest, you'll have to read it for yourself. There are some pretty graphic descriptions of atrocities committed by both sides; what men and women do to each other boggles the mind. If you are interested in civil war history this is one for your bookshelf. |
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3 1/2 stars because the writing got in the way of the story. -  |
Enemy Women: A Novel Review |
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I really wanted to like this book. The pick for our July book club, it came highly recommended. The storyline was good. The setting was excellent, the topic, again, excellent. I didn't mind the historical data starting each chapter, in fact, enjoyed it. Editing could have kept these tidbits from old letters and newspapers from bordering on repetitive. Many chapters had three quotes to start, when one or two would have sufficed. But that is not what kept this from being a better book.
The absence of quotations around dialog was maddening. I kept wondering, was she thinking this, or saying this? It caused many parts to have to be reread. The author also chose to rarely use helpers with the dialog, such as `she cried' or `he whispered' or `she curtly replied' instead using only the occasional `she said' or `he said'. What this does is dampen the impact of the dialog, effectively removing the emotion. The romance, that should have resonated, seemed flat because of the author's writing style. I'm from Missouri, and am interested in the topic, time, and events that Paulette Jiles chose to write about. A rating of three and one half stars is generous for this attempt. |
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Understanding why they are still enemies -  |
Enemy Women: A Novel Review |
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This book was so beautifully, lyrically written. The excerpts of historical documents at chapter beginnings really helped provide some context of varying viewpoints. Reading this book makes one understand why there are still Southerners who hate Yankees all these years later. Wonderful, colorful characters. |
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Mixed emotions. - |
Enemy Women: A Novel Review |
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I have mixed emotions about this book, which is as good a reason as I can think of for rating something a middling three stars. On the one hand, it is a powerful story of the effect of the civil war on two people, one a Union soldier and one a southern woman, and it is set in my adopted home state, which is always a pleasant plus. On the other hand, after giving us a whole novel full of gritty, depressing events it gives us a fake saccharine ending, which just left a bad taste in my mouth. Mind you, I have nothing against happy endings, but this one was, for one thing, not terribly believable, and for another, clearly not much of an ending. Is there a sequel in the works? That was no place to leave off unless there is, or unless what follows would be just as painful and depressing as what had happened so far, and the author preferred to leave off at the only high point to be found. I suspect the latter, which is why I say that the ending didn't ring true.
In addition, there was the stylistic affectation of leaving out any and all quotation marks, which after I noticed it (I confess, I didn't notice as quickly as I'd have expected to) I found incredibly annoying and distracting. Not a bad book, but not very satisfying, either. |
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A far cry from Gone with the Wind - |
Enemy Women: A Novel Review |
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Images of the Civil War have been burned into our collective mind since childhood history classes - either young boys fighting, brother against brother, or else gallant gentlemen paying court to hoop skirted gentile ladies as war pounds on in the background. This novel is not a story of those wars. The war on the frontier was a very different beast, and it's a story not often told. Jiles tells a captivating story of the dregs of the officer corps, sent to subdue states forced to fight in causes largely irrelevant to them (entire states in the frontier south held fewer slaves than single plantations in the coastal south). The "enemy women" in these frontier states did not face the chivalry of a gentlemanly officer corps. The men sent to guard them were barely officers and certainly not gentlemen. This book is a good story just as a work of fiction, but add to that how well it rounds out an incomplete image of the realities of our Civil War and it becomes a must read for any American History buff. Like Cold Mountain, this new generation of historical fiction that tells the small stories rather than aiming for the sweeping saga, really can place the reader in the footsteps of history. |
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