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3.75 AVERAGE
3.75 AVERAGE
Fascinating stories about powerful female spies. An easy read with laugh aloud moments, would definitely recommend.
dark
informative
slow-paced
True story of 4 women during the Civil War - two from the Union, two from the Confederacy. It was very well researched and an amazing view of how war divided a country while still living in such close proximity! I had never realized how easily people passed back and forth between the every changing boundaries, especially in the Shenendoah vally area (where one of my daughters lives. Her town is mentioned many times).
The constant changing of characters was a bit tough to follow and things started slowly for me. But by the end, I was hooked. The lives of each woman after the war were equally fascinating. Women were considered so negligible that they could do far more than they could now. Or maybe not?
The constant changing of characters was a bit tough to follow and things started slowly for me. But by the end, I was hooked. The lives of each woman after the war were equally fascinating. Women were considered so negligible that they could do far more than they could now. Or maybe not?
I really appreciated that these women's stories were told, and that equal attention was given to both rebel and Federalist sides. When reading it, it's important not to get swept up in the sensationalism and romanticism that happened occasionally. However, including some of those ideas did make it less dry, which can be an issue in nonfiction texts. One must remember that this book is an interpretation of what these women left behind and others wrote about them. If you can put some of the sensationalism aside, then it's a nice narrative of stories that are often overlooked in our history books. It shows how multifaceted women are in a historical context, and just how important to our narrative they are. I would have liked to see the narrative include more about Mary Bowser, and think she could have had her own chapters, provided the sources are there. I didn't mind the hopping around from one woman to the next, but I didn't like that dates weren't included in the chapter titles or through out the narrative. It could be easy to get lost in the events if you don't have a solid understanding of when events took place during the Civil War.
adventurous
emotional
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
The role of women in the Civil War seems to have become a niche area in the market over the last couple years, especially in fiction (where I could easily name five right now), but this is the first major non-fiction work that I have seen recently on the subject. And while it is non-fiction, there is so much action and adventure packed into its pages, that it could almost be a novel!
Karen Abbott utilizes four women to represent the varying types of roles that women took up during the war. These perspectives shatter the perception that women were left at home defenseless when their men went off to fight. And while that was likely the case in some situations, many times women found ways to be active in a traditionally male world. Especially with the fact that the fighting was happening right in their own backyards they could very easily become involved. All of these women served as spies, but each in a different way. Rose carried on in her life like the socialite that she was in Washington and passed the information she gleaned along to her Confederate cohort. Belle actively ran information through the lines to the Confederate generals. Emma disguised as a man fought out on the battlefield and was brought in for reconnaissance missions from time to time. Elizabeth, a Union sympathizer living in the South, used her home as a secret base for escapees from Confederate confinement and as a hub of intelligence communication. These were not women to just sit by and wait for the war to end – and as Elizabeth’s network shows, there were many, many other women involved.
Don’t let the 500+ page count deter you from this book. I’m not one who typically likes to read longer books, because I like to change up what I read more frequently. However, I found that the pages just flew by and before I knew it I was done with the book. The author bounces back and forth between the women’s stories, and in different hands, it could have felt like a ping-pong match. Abbott deftly weaves these stories together in a way where each ties into the next seamlessly and the shift in time and place is not in any way jarring. You get battle stories, home-front stories, and real life stories – it is a very well rounded book that has a little something for everyone. And the details! Sometimes the volume of detail can feel like an info-dump, but Abbott weaves SO much detail into this book, but it never feels overwhelming or too much.
This book will introduce you to some women to be admired and another side of Civil War history. It is not just for Civil War buffs, but for women’s history fans and history aficionados in general. Highly recommended it!
This review was previously posted at The Maiden's Court blog.
Karen Abbott utilizes four women to represent the varying types of roles that women took up during the war. These perspectives shatter the perception that women were left at home defenseless when their men went off to fight. And while that was likely the case in some situations, many times women found ways to be active in a traditionally male world. Especially with the fact that the fighting was happening right in their own backyards they could very easily become involved. All of these women served as spies, but each in a different way. Rose carried on in her life like the socialite that she was in Washington and passed the information she gleaned along to her Confederate cohort. Belle actively ran information through the lines to the Confederate generals. Emma disguised as a man fought out on the battlefield and was brought in for reconnaissance missions from time to time. Elizabeth, a Union sympathizer living in the South, used her home as a secret base for escapees from Confederate confinement and as a hub of intelligence communication. These were not women to just sit by and wait for the war to end – and as Elizabeth’s network shows, there were many, many other women involved.
Don’t let the 500+ page count deter you from this book. I’m not one who typically likes to read longer books, because I like to change up what I read more frequently. However, I found that the pages just flew by and before I knew it I was done with the book. The author bounces back and forth between the women’s stories, and in different hands, it could have felt like a ping-pong match. Abbott deftly weaves these stories together in a way where each ties into the next seamlessly and the shift in time and place is not in any way jarring. You get battle stories, home-front stories, and real life stories – it is a very well rounded book that has a little something for everyone. And the details! Sometimes the volume of detail can feel like an info-dump, but Abbott weaves SO much detail into this book, but it never feels overwhelming or too much.
This book will introduce you to some women to be admired and another side of Civil War history. It is not just for Civil War buffs, but for women’s history fans and history aficionados in general. Highly recommended it!
This review was previously posted at The Maiden's Court blog.
I enjoyed the stories of these four women who rose above the expectations of their gender during the Civil War, whether in secret or openly, to fight for what they thought was right. It was hard not to admire even the secessionists, with whom my ideals differ greatly. I was surprised by how easily men could be duped into sharing classified information with an outspoken member of the opposition, just because she was a woman. It came as no great surprise that all four felt unsatisfied with life after the war, when they had to resume "normal feminine" life. I also loved the little tidbits of info on the things everyday women, both black and white, did to further the cause of their side of the fight.
This is a tough one to rate. I'm unsure if it was the writing, or that I've been struggling to read anything lately. I had both the print copy, and the audio book, and kept flipping back and forth in order to finish it before book club. Some parts of this were very interesting. Others, not as much. I do appreciate that the author tried not to stray from actual facts (letters, diaries, documents, artifacts, and stories from their families) and did not enhance or embellish their tales. But perhaps that is why I didn't get as invested as I wanted to. It took me about half way through to be able to differentiate between Rose and Belle, and only because one had a daughter. I really enjoyed Emma's tale though. The depth of danger Elizabeth put herself in, didn't really come through until much later in the book.