A review by maryquitecontrary_22
Enemy Women by Paulette Jiles

4.0

After reading Jiles' National Book Award winner News of the World, I wanted to pick up more of her writing. A trail rider herself, Jiles does an exceptional job of writing about long journeys on horseback, including in the book Enemy Women. This Civil War novel shows the reality of what it meant to have pitted neighbor against neighbor in the savage fight over state rights and slavery. Women were used as pawns and both sides of the war did horrific things to one another. I loved that the protagonist Adair is such a bold spitfire of a character. I also especially enjoyed the historical excerpts at the beginning of each chapter that Jiles pulled from primary documents, as well as contemporary research on that time in history.

P.S. For all those wondering about Jiles' choice not to use quotation marks, I found this response from her to that exact question in an article on the Sacramento Bee: "Using quote marks is like surrounding human speech with barbed wire. I figured if I was careful enough about how I placed sentences, readers would be able to do without quote marks and I would be freed up. It's an aesthetic thing, I guess, but I like the effect."