Karen Abbott, the New York Times bestselling author of Sin in the Second City and “pioneer of sizzle history” (USA Today), tells the spellbinding true story of four women who risked everything to become spies during the Civil War.
Karen Abbott illuminates one of the most fascinating yet little known aspects of the Civil War: the stories of four courageous women—a socialite, a farmgirl, an … women—a socialite, a farmgirl, an abolitionist, and a widow—who were spies.
After shooting a Union soldier in her front hall with a pocket pistol, Belle Boyd became a courier and spy for the Confederate army, using her charms to seduce men on both sides. Emma Edmonds cut off her hair and assumed the identity of a man to enlist as a Union private, witnessing the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. The beautiful widow, Rose O’Neale Greenhow, engaged in affairs with powerful Northern politicians to gather intelligence for the Confederacy, and used her young daughter to send information to Southern generals. Elizabeth Van Lew, a wealthy Richmond abolitionist, hid behind her proper Southern manners as she orchestrated a far-reaching espionage ring, right under the noses of suspicious rebel detectives.
Using a wealth of primary source material and interviews with the spies’ descendants, Abbott seamlessly weaves the adventures of these four heroines throughout the tumultuous years of the war. With a cast of real-life characters including Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, General Stonewall Jackson, detective Allan Pinkerton, Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, and Emperor Napoleon III, Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy draws you into the war as these daring women lived it.
Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy contains 39 black & photos and 3 maps.
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A great historical book about the role several women played in the Civil War. Their stories were fascinating historical facts that I had never heard anything about before. Very interesting!
Elizabeth Van Lew was my great great great aunt. I am fascinated by her story as well as the other women of her day. Karen Abbott does a great job of weaving these stories together in an easy to read manner. If you enjoy American history, you will enjoy this book.
Excellent historical book!
Just Okay. Disjointed and boring.
This is a well researched book that tells of 4 women during the Civil War who served their country (on both sides) without fanfare, but did what they believed they were called to do. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and would recommend it to anyone who Likes this period in American History.
Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy is an in-depth look at four women – two Union and two Confederate – who determined to play a role in the Civil War. Karen Abbott deftly traces the paths each of the women took, comparing and contrasting their histories along the way.
Rose O’Neal Greenhow and Elizabeth Van Lew are two of the best-known spies from the time, Rose for the Confederacy and Van Lew for the Union. The women are portrayed as being 180 degrees apart in temperament and methods (with ROG fulfilling the role of “temptress,” particularly of Congressmen and other political types, while EVL was clearly a “liar,” and never more than when a Confederate general and chief of the POW system in Richmond moved into her home to better keep an eye on her). Their belief in the their respective causes was equally unwavering, and each paid a particularly steep price for her wartime activities.
Emma Edmonds ran away from her New Brunswick home, living as a man in Flint, Michigan, before the war in order to escape society’s expectations of a woman of her time and class. She enlisted under her assumed name, Frank Thompson, and served as a courier, spy, and infantryman in a number of the wars bloodiest battles before, going AWOL and reclaiming Emma’s identity. (I was familiar with many aspects of Edmonds’s/Thompson’s story from They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the Civil War, which I read earlier this year.)
Belle Boyd was 17 when the war hit home, literally, with Union soldiers forcibly entering her family’s home in Martinsburg, Virginia, (later West Virginia). Of the four women, Belle most completely embodies the four roles of Abbott’s title, and is portrayed, at least, as having the most colorful personality.
Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy is an informative and interesting read that those with an interest in women’s history or the American Civil War will especially enjoy.
(This review was originally published at https://www.thisyearinbooks.com/2015/08/liar-temptress-soldier-spy-four-women.html)
This book about 4 female Civil War spies was a must-read for me and was everything I’d hoped–the final line of the epilogue leaving me with goosebumps (I’m not even kidding). I already knew about each of these women– had even researched several of them myself for my own novel– but I feel like I learned SO MUCH about them and the lengths they and many others went to in pursuit of their ideals. Abbott gives a thorough, compelling, suspenseful account of each woman’s life during the war years, portraying them each with sensitivity and careful detail, giving voice to their beliefs and allowing the reader to come to her own conclusions about each woman.
I enjoy non fiction books that read like a story!! Loved it!
A bit of history not taught in school Heroic women!
Fast read, good stories, but I read that she embellished the historical facts, and was no longer interested to finish.
Well-written and well-researched account of four women’s involvement in the Civil War.
I’m not a history buff and I found this book to be very informative. Good read. Well written.
Pretty gruesome.
It is not too often I find a bit of history that I had never heard about but this is it. That there were four women who figured importantly in the civil war is a fact well worth discovering. This book tells their stories very well.
Too much of a documentary for me.
Good historical book about an aspect of the civil war
I could not get into this one..it skipped around too much
Great book . . A little difficult trying to keep all the characters straight . . but 3/4 of the way into it, the book became a little redundant & repetitive . .
Currently reading. Interesting. A part of history I knew nothing of.
Loved it