Enemy Women: A Novel [Hardcover]

Paulette Jiles (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 5, 2002

From critically acclaimed, award-winning poet and memoirist Paulette Jiles comes a debut novel of startling power and savage beauty -- an extraordinary story of survival and love in the midst of a torn nation's bitter agony.

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 seen at its most terrible on the day the Union Militia arrives to set her house on fire, driving her brother into hiding and dragging her widowed father away, beaten and bloodied. Left to care for two young sisters, Adair sees no road but the one that leads away, as they start out on foot into the winter mountains in search of a safe haven.

Even the least of hopes is doomed, however, in a world forever changed, as the treachery of a fellow traveler brings about Adair's arrest on charges of “enemy collaboration.” Torn from her terrified sisters, the girl suddenly finds herself consigned to a living hell, caged with the criminal and the deranged in a filthy women's prison in St. Louis.

But young Adair is sustained by a strong heart, and love can live even in a place of horror and despair. Her interrogator, a Union major, falls in love with her and she finds herself returning her feelings despite herself. The major vows to return for her when the fighting is over, and before he returns to war, he leaves her with a last precious gift: freedom.

Weakened in body but not in spirit, Adair must now travel alone through dangerous, unknown territory -- an escaped “enemy woman” surrounded by perils and misery on all sides.She makes her harrowing way south buoyed by a promise, seeking a home and a family that may be nothing more than a memory.

Based on a little known chapter in America's bloodiest epoch, Paulette Jiles's poignant, powerful, and exquisitely rendered novel about war's collateral victims is masterful work, captivating and authentic -- a lyrical, memorable tale of endurance and sacrifice that will stand alongside Cold Mountain and other classic Civil War era-set literature for decades to come.

Editorial Reviews

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

From Publishers Weekly

For Adair Randolph Colley, at 18 the eldest daughter of a widowed Missouri Ozarks schoolmaster and justice of the peace, the Civil War becomes personal when her father, who has remained neutral in the conflict, is arrested by the Union militia, their home is nearly burned and their possessions stolen. At the start of this spirited first novel, Adair and her two younger sisters try to follow their father's captors, but Adair is falsely denounced as a Confederate spy. At the prison in St. Louis, upright commandant Maj. William Neumann is embarrassed to be interrogating women and has requested a transfer to a fighting unit. He's touched by Adair's beauty and spirit and asks her to give him some information so she can be released. Instead, she writes the story of her life, augmented by folk tales and fables, and he finds himself falling in love. When he gets his reassignment orders, he proposes marriage and asks her to escape, promising to find her after the war. Thus begins a long and terrible journey for each of them. Poet and memoirist Jiles (North Spirit) has written a striking debut novel whose tone lingers poignantly. Not a typical romantic heroine, Adair has the saucy naevete of an unsophisticated countrywoman and the wily bravery born of an honest character. Jiles's strengths include a sure command of period vernacular and knowledge of the social customs among backwoods people, as well as a delicate hand with the love story. Sure to be touted as a new Cold Mountain, this stark, unsentimental, yet touching novel will not suffer in comparison. Agent, Liz Darhansoff. (Feb.)Forecast: Family stories were the basis of Jiles's plot, augmented by Civil War letters and documents prefacing each chapter. While the writing is literary, the book is more accessible than Cold Mountain, and could easily win a wide audience, boosted by regional author appearances.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1st edition (February 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0066214440
• ISBN-13: 978-0066214443
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (113 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #913,569 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

77 of 81 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A PULITZER CANDIDATE IF THERE EVER WAS ONE, March 9, 2002

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Enemy Women: A Novel (Hardcover)

Poet Paulette Jiles opens a chapter of her splendid debut novel, Enemy Women, with an eyewitness account penned in the 1860s: ".....On this same raid they went into the home of two of my uncles and took them out and hung them to their own gatepost. They were big men and were my mother's brothers. My mother was there and saw it all and as long as she lived she never got over the shock. And they called that a civil war. It was the cruelest war we ever had."

Cruel may well be a euphemism for the atrocities suffered during the American Civil War, yet there was also great courage and strength. With deft narrative skills and the story of one young woman, Ms. Jiles has created an unforgettable portrait of a nation riven by mortal strife.

In 1864, the third year of the war, Adair Colley lives with her family on a farm in the Missouri Ozarks. It is Confederate territory but the Colleys remain neutral. Adair has just turned eighteen when the Union Militia gallops onto their property, attempts to burn the house, and strikes her widowed father in the face with a wagon spoke before arresting him. To punctuate their visit the Militia "shot the dogs and took as many chickens and geese and pigs as they could catch."

John, the only Colley son, seeks shelter in nearby hills. While Adair, believing there might be safety to the north, takes her two younger sisters and begins the 120 mile trek to Iron Mountain. They join "the streams of refugees afoot as if they were white trash." Any hope of finding a haven is destroyed when one among the walkers falsely accuses Adair of collaborating with the enemy, and she is taken from her terrified sisters to a women's prison in St. Louis.

Filthy, rank, and cold, the prison is "like the Female Seminary of the netherworld. A ladies' academy in hell." Nonetheless, it is here that she meets her Union interrogator, Major William Neumann. They fall in love. When Adair refuses to sign a confession in order to obtain her freedom, Neumann helps her escape with the promise that he will find her after the war.

However, there are still countless dangers to be faced as Neumann is sent to the Alabama front lines, and Adair braves a perilous solitary trek through uncharted wilderness and enemy territory to find what might be left of her home and family.

Debilitated by her prison stay and a chronic cough which a "steam doctor" diagnoses as consumption she presses on, sometimes forced to steal for food and clothing.

Adair is the embodiment of an innocent victimized by war as well as a reminder of the tensile strength humans summon when there is an intense desire to survive.

With researcher's eye Ms. Jiles has illuminated a little known aspect of Civil War history, the incarceration of women. Her prose is artful, describing a new leaf as "already as large as a squirrel's ear, " or a man with "a pair of jaws like church pews." Painful in its authenticity, poetically rendered, Enemy Women is a book that will not be forgotten.

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK!, May 3, 2002

By 

"jmklabin" (Boonton, NJ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Enemy Women: A Novel (Hardcover)

I wasn't going to read this novel. I'm not big on the Civil War or history or stories that take place pre-1900, but Anna Quindlen and Kaye Gibbons raved about it so I thought I'd give it a try. Thank Heavens I did. I could not get enough of this novel. Paulette Jiles pulls you right into Missouri and takes you through an exciting journey with Adair Colley. Jiles' writing is so crisp that you can feel the wind and the sunlight she writes about, you can hear the horses galloping in the woods, you will fall in love with the Missouri wilderness (and will Col. Neumann, too!) But this is more than I love story. The history of the Civil War is absolute throughout. I cannot imagine a single soul that would not find this novel to be worth the read.

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Southern Woman's Civil War Journey, February 23, 2002

By 

Sheri Melnick (Enola, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Enemy Women: A Novel (Hardcover)

Award-winning poet Paulette Jiles enthralls readers with this, her first novel, a gripping tale of love and survival among the destruction of the Civil War. In southeastern Missouri, Adair Colley and her two young sisters are left alone when the Union Militia arrests their father. Leaving their partially burnt home, the girls set out on foot to search for their father.

But Missouri is a state divided, with renegade rebels led by Colonel Tim Reeves, and the Union Militia destroying all in the name of martial law. When Adair is arrested on false charges of aiding the confederate "enemy", she is taken to a prison in St. Louis and must leave her sisters behind. Crafty and resourceful, Adair manages to survive amongst the female population of the General Ward, despite threats from other inmates and the evil-doings of the matron.

While in prison, Adair attracts the attention of Major William Neumann, who promises to request her release in return for a signed confession. As the frequency of their meetings increases, their clever banter gradually changes into a union of like souls, amidst the horrors of the war. When they must each go their different ways, time will tell if love is strong enough to withstand their separation.

Lyrical prose capturing both the beauty of the Ozarks and the destruction of human life all around forms the framework in this alluring read. The texture is further enhanced by the snippets of Civil War history interspersed with fictional elements. And the focus on a Civil War Missouri is both refreshing and educational, no antebellum homes here, mostly just poor farmers with nary a plantation in sight.