Enemy Women : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: A great sense of history but too much like a romance novel
Review: This book is based on both scrupulous research about the Civil War, as well as stories of the author's own family and neighbors which have been passed down through the generations. For its literary style and emotion impact, it's being compared to "Cold Mountain", a tremendously successful novel that also brought the realities of the Civil War to life through the experiences of a single character.

There's an authenticity about the setting which is augmented by each chapter heading which includes long excepts from actual period documents. This framework works well, as do all the little details of the period, which seemed to just pick me up and set me down right in the middle of the Ozark region in the 1860s. And some of her descriptive passages seemed like pure poetry. Instead of focusing on the big battles, it is about bloodshed and fear and tumultuous conditions for the average person during those awful times. The heroine, Adair Colley, is just 18 years old when the war starts. When Union troops burn her house and imprison her father, she takes to the road with her two younger sisters, only to be captured and sent to a federal women's prison in St. Louis. The conditions there are harsh and she suffers from fever, but refuses to make a confession that might put her brother and neighbors in danger. Somehow, though, she has a romance with the Union officer who interrogates her, helps her escape, and vows to return to her after the war.

This is where the credibility of the book broke down for me. She's just a little too pretty, has a little too much grit, and there is little, if any complexity to her character. Of course we root for the poor dear as she conquers obstacle after obstacle, always surviving in spite of horrible odds even though she is has consumption, her food supply is sparse, and she's constantly running from Union troops. The bad guys are just a little too bad, the good guys get killed or suffer, and, even though she has to steal to get by, she always comes out on top. I never did see what she saw in the Union officer she loves and even though there are several chapters devoted to his battle experience, he never really come across in any depth. The conclusion was inevitable and I knew it long before I finished the book, which soon became very boring to read. I also can't understand why the author decided not to use quotation marks and this often broke my concentration just to follow some of the dialogue.

I therefore have to give this book a mixed review. It gets a high recommendation for its setting and sense of history. But as for the characters and the situation, I have to give it a "thumbs down".

Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary...
Review: This is a miraculous book. It is beautifully written. My own "roots" are in SE Missouri, the locale of this book. These could be my ancestors, and everything Paulette Jiles writes rings true to the Civil War stories my grandparents passed down to me. This is the Civil War - and Frontier - novel I have always wanted to read. I thank the author for it.

Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful, Quality Read
Review: After reading "Enemy Women", it will be some days before I will try to read another book. Paulette Jiles' writing is of such quality that the "usual stuff" we pick up at the bookstore cannot stand in comparison. There are other reviews here that give you the outline and flavor of the story, and they do it very well. What I am here to tell you is, yes -- this is a book worth reading. Read it slowly, and enjoy every beautifully written page. There are paragraphs I read over and over, just to fully experience every color of every brushstroke of every word.
Bring on the awards. As with Frank McCourt and Carol Shields, this is an author whose signature I hope to someday have in my copy of their wonderful book.

Rating:
Summary: I don't often read Civil War novels.
Review: The American Civil War was such an intense and cruel time for
this country. Both of my great great grandfathers fought with
the Union Army, and everything that I've read about the War
suggests that any battles they fought in were dark and difficult.
"Enemy Women" shows the darkness and the cruelty and the
hardness that surrounded everyone during this war. And it shows
how civilians suffered as much as the men who had to fight.
A wonderful book that gives a glimpse of what life must have
been like during this terrible time.

Rating:
Summary: At last, real historical fiction.
Review: I have always loved historical fiction. Unfortunately these days, we most often see historical romance. Not that I don't enjoy a little romance. Infact, we have a little in this book by Paulette Jiles. I do love the historic information, the true picture of the life style, speech, clothing and family life of these not-so-well-off people of the south during the civil war. Everyone did not own a plantation and slaves, but all had their lives changed by this war. A couple of times I thought things came around too nicely in the story, like actually finding her stolen horse, but I truly enjoyed the heroines spirit and ability to just keep going, no matter what. Write another for me Paulette!

Rating:
Summary: A PULITZER CANDIDATE IF THERE EVER WAS ONE
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: How can anybody write this beautifully?!
Review: First of all, I will not summarize the novel; it has already been done. I will simply reflect in a scattershot way. The comparison to Frazier's Cold Mountain is inevitable; however, I feel Ms. Jiles has her own voice. I also see comparison to Howard Bahr's The Black Flower. If I were to rank the three, Ms. Jiles' Enemy Women is the best with The Black Flower second. Sorry gentlemen, but Adair, the female heroine does it for me; I love her. She will honestly go down in my favorite character hall of fame. She is sarcastic, funny, childlike, naive, pensive, resourceful--all rolled into one. I agree with the previous reviewer's use of the word ephemeral but in a much more positive way. I think of the prison washlines and description of Adair's hair--always returning to her beautiful hair whether drying or floating in Hominy Creek, washing, etc. It is almost otherworldly-- beautifully and flawlessly written in my humble opinion. I also was particularly moved by the landscape--Adair riding Whiskey, returning home, etc. Perhaps it is just me, but the writing was quite sensuous.
As far as characterization, Adair is much more than a one-dimensional static character. She is a child when she sets out with her sisters seeking her father's whereabouts, but she is much more when she returns home. She both feels and acts. Neumann is not what this novel is about; it is mainly Adair's story, but also the story of all those who lost their lives, homes, livelihoods, so senselessly in the Civil War, and their journeys to find something meaningful in all that chaos. Which brings me to the chapter-introducing bits and pieces from letters, etc. I am an English teacher constantly attempting to get my students to step back in time and experience; however, even the most intelligent seem incapable of doing this. I was very moved by the James McPherson on p. 295; we should all ponder this.
In conclusion, Ms. Jiles has done the best possible job transporting the reader to the Civil War era; the language, colloquialisms, mannerisms, speech patterns, etc. I don't do the novel justice; you, dear reader, can only do that by giving Enemy Women a chance. I don't think you will regret it.

Rating:
Summary: Skip the historical inserts
Review: I liked this book very much, but was glad I had read a NY Times Review that suggested skipping the historical inserts at the beginning of each chapter. The story flowed much more smoothly without them, and reading them all together at the end did not detract from the impact of the book. This is definitely a book I will recommend.

Rating:
Summary: Iron Mountain.....
Review: ENEMY WOMEN has been compared with COLD MOUNTAIN, and there are similarities, including a Civil War setting and Odessey-like experiences. The female protagonist is more heavily featured in ENEMY WOMEN. Whereas COLD MOUNTAIN is set in the Great Smokies of North Carolina, ENEMY WOMEN is set in Southeastern Missouri in the Ozarks. Charles Frazier, the author of COLD MOUNTAIN wrote about his great-grandparents. I don't know if Paulette Jiles has written about her family, but she hails from the Missouri Ozarks.

Jiles describes the mountaineer Southerners as Scotch-Irish (not to be confused with Catholic Irish who fought for the North), who following their ill treatment at the hands of the Union became completely hostile to outsiders which was certainly the impression I gathered growing up in Western North Carolina as the child of a FED, Yankee, from the frozen North, who was Catholic, and descended from the "other" side.

Jiles is correct when she says that most Southerners did not own slaves (check the U.S. Census of 1850 and you will be stunned to see exactly who owned whom!!). And she performs a great service by once again pointing out that the Civil War was a mindless disaster. The aftermath of the half million needless deaths 1861-1865 was a depression in the South that lasted until after WWII, and fueled an everlasting hatred that time has yet to erase, which manifested itself in the 20th Century in Jim Crow laws, and other anti-social acts.

I'd like to say ENEMY WOMEN is as well written as COLD MOUNTAIN but I don't think it is. It's a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, however, so it's probably going to be a best seller. I found it an entertaining read--I read it in two sittings. However, I was disappointed by the underdeveloped main characters. William Neumann is a cipher and Adair Colley is all action and no reflection.

The book jacket description of Jiles as an "old soul" seems to be a bit of hype, although in her picture she appears to be a "good ole girl." Jiles has a gift for metaphor and she paints some beautiful pictures with her words, but her scenes are ephemeral rather than substantive and I didn't get the same goose bumps I got with COLD MOUNTAIN. She has assembled enough material for a good movie, but Ang Lee already made a film about the underbelly of the Civil War in Kansas and Missouri called RIDE WITH THE DEVIL.

I thought perhaps Jiles used the Tarot and the 'journey of the hero' as an organizing principle for her work but I cannot find enough material to support this notion. Adair certainly believes in all sorts of "old" ways, and witches and fortune-tellers can be found inside and outside prison as can references to the Tarot deck. At one point, a "hanged man" graces a tree, and the moon and the stars are found in quite few scenes. There's a one-eyed man, but he belongs to another story, and he's not a Cyclops. There's a traveling troupe of actors with a dancing pig, but this is not Shakespeare either. There are plenty of bloody beastly scenes that will put you off your cornflakes. Those looking for romance may find more gore than kisses, but as General Sherman said, war is hell. Still, it's an interesting book and if you like period pieces that move at a fast pace you'll probably enjoy it.

Rating:
Summary: A Southern Woman's Civil War Journey
Review: 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.