Enemy Women

Enemy Women by Paulette Jiles

Consider the state of Missouri during the Civil War and you will see the war in a nutshell.  A portion of the population was pro-Southern. Yet Missouri decided to remain in the Union.  But they declared neutrality when the war began. And the residents were beset by bands of Union militia and Confederate renegades who stole, ravaged, and murdered their way through the countryside throughout the course of the war.  Missouri had an additional, dubious distinction: when the Union Army occupied Missouri, it imprisoned many ordinary women if they were suspected of supporting the Confederacy.

This is the backdrop for Enemy Women, an impressive work of historical fiction that depicts a little-known aspect of the Civil War.  The story begins at the Colley farm in the Missouri Ozarks.  A renegade Union militia group takes Justice Colley prisoner, drives his son into hiding, and destroys their farm.  Afraid to remain on the property without their father, 18-year-old Adair and her younger sisters start to walk north toward St. Louis with the hope of finding a safer place to wait out the war.

Adair is not afraid to speak the truth as she sees it, and often pays heavily for her candor.  On the trail to St. Louis, she offends a woman who retaliates by accusing Adair of aiding the Confederacy.  Adair is imprisoned for this offense, and faces painful consequences when she argues with the prison matron.  When Adair is interrogated by a Union officer, she in turn challenges him to explain his part in the cowardly practice of locking up innocent women. This conversation is the first of many for this unlikely couple.  Their ensuing relationship results in Adair's escape and the officer's transfer to the battlegrounds of the Deep South.  They hope to meet again at the end of the war, but the murderous chaos of the time does not give them much hope for the future.