March has been a busy month. It is my Birthday Month ( I take the whole month in case someone wants to take me out to lunch) and it is the busy season of Easter. Therefore, it took me a little longer than usual to read LIAR TEMPTRESS SOLDER SPY by Karen Abbott. It was worth the time.
Karen Abbott has taken her readers into the Civil War in a very personal way, with the true stories of four women, Belle Boyd, Rose O'Neal Greenhow, Emma Edmond and Elizabeth Van Lew. Each woman played a part in the events that took place between 1861 and 1865, but they also represent the many other unsung women who never made the history books.
Belle Boyd was only seventeen when she shot one of the Union soldiers who had entered her home. Belle was known as the " fasted girl in Virginia (or anywhere)" by her friends. The chance to work undercover for the Confederate Army suited her need to be noticed as well as her sense of adventure.
Rose O'Neal Greenhow was a beautiful widow who used her relationships with powerful Union men to get information for Southern generals. Using her young daughter, she devised a system to get that information to the Confederate army, even while in jail.
Serving as a private in the Union army, Emma Edmonds, as Frank Thompson, saw the bloodiest part of the war. Helping in the field hospitals and caring messages for her commanders, she was able to infiltrate enemy lines. Naturally, one of her biggest problems was keeping her gender a secret.
Wealthy, socialite Elizabeth Van Lew developed a spy network that went as far as putting one of her former slaves inside the home of Jefferson Davis. Her social position gave her opportunities to hide escaped Union soldiers in her home under the eyes of the Confederate general
Author Karen Abbott has well documented LIAR TEMPTRESS SOLDER SPY. In fact her resource list takes up a large part of the book. It always is a problem for me to sift through what is pure history and what is poetic license on the part of the author. There were times that her details of what the women wore bordered on the "chick lit" line. I did wonder how the ladies were able to pack the many articles of clothing that were needed to be fashionable in the mid-sixteen hundreds. After getting to know these women, I would guess that their diaries would have included their wardrobe. Rose and Belle were very aware of their appearance and their attraction to men.
So much has been written about the Civil War, but this book brought it to a level that I could understand. Both sides were treated equally by the author and the waste of war came more evident, especially where Emma was featured. The amount of lives lost has been well documented, but here it seemed overwhelming.
Some readers have questioned the authenticity of some of the details. For example, how Emma could have passed as a male soldier for four years. Ms Abbott did mention that she had doubts about some of the details in the women's diaries. Knowing that people will add facts to their diaries to make themselves "look good" did not hurt the stories in LIAR TEMPTRESS SOLDER SPY. It was a fascinating book and if a fraction of the details were tweeked, it was still a good read.
Oh, do not try to figure which was the liar, the temptress, the solder or the spy. There was a bit of each in each woman.
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