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northship 's review for:
this was a really, really interesting book to read and again,i'm amazed by the depths of abbott’s research. this is the kind of history i’d hoped for from her book about gypsy rose, just better structured and easier to slog through.
the book is, unsurprisingly, about female spies during the civil war – two union sympathizers and two confederates. i’d heard of two of the four women she profiled (belle boyd and rose o'neal greenhow) but not emma edmonds or elizabeth van lew, and reading both of their stories, and particularly their sheer courage, was pretty amazing.
it was interesting, too, to see how each woman (all with incredibly strong beliefs) navigated the social mores and the way women were treated at the time. greenhow operated within that paradigm (seducing men) while edmonds had to live as a man in order to join the army. none of them really had “happy endings” – belle boyd suffered through divorces and nervous breakdowns; greenhow drowned on a blockade runner; van lew became a lonely social outcast; and edmonds … well, I suppose her story is the “happiest,” even if it’s not necessarily what she wanted for herself.
any quoted dialogue is taken verbatim from memoirs or letters, and in that sense, you really felt like you could hear these women talking across the years.
the book is, unsurprisingly, about female spies during the civil war – two union sympathizers and two confederates. i’d heard of two of the four women she profiled (belle boyd and rose o'neal greenhow) but not emma edmonds or elizabeth van lew, and reading both of their stories, and particularly their sheer courage, was pretty amazing.
it was interesting, too, to see how each woman (all with incredibly strong beliefs) navigated the social mores and the way women were treated at the time. greenhow operated within that paradigm (seducing men) while edmonds had to live as a man in order to join the army. none of them really had “happy endings” – belle boyd suffered through divorces and nervous breakdowns; greenhow drowned on a blockade runner; van lew became a lonely social outcast; and edmonds … well, I suppose her story is the “happiest,” even if it’s not necessarily what she wanted for herself.
any quoted dialogue is taken verbatim from memoirs or letters, and in that sense, you really felt like you could hear these women talking across the years.