Karen abbott civil war reenactments

Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War by Karen Abbott. HarperCollins Publishers, Cloth, ISBN:  $

In this compelling popular history, New York Times bestselling author Karen Abbott tells the gripping story of four audacious women and their acts of espionage during the Civil War.

Abbott skillfully intertwines the lives of the charming, young, southern spitfire, Belle Boyd; the beautiful and wily southern widow, Rose O’Neal Greenhow; the clever Richmond matron and Unionist, Elizabeth VanLew; and the Canadian expat and Union soldier, Emma Edmonds, whose pre-war assumption of a male identity enabled her simultaneously to join the army and flee her troubled past.

Relying on both primary and secondary sources—including the women’s own memoirs, journals, and correspondence, as well as other diaries, newspapers, letters, the Official Records, contemporary monographs, and even oral histories with some of the women’s descendants—Abbott presents a rich an