Dimensions
161 x 237 x 42mm
The never-before-told story of four real-life women who risked everything to take on a life of espionage during the Civil War. Belle was a socialite. Emma was a farmgirl. Elizabeth was an abolitionist. Rose was a widow. Each of these women was born into a Victorian age of corsets and limited choices, but each would make the decision to risk their lives in the service of a cause they deemed to be greater than their domestic obligations. In 1861, state by state, the South declared independence from America, and the North declared its intention to preserve the Union. The Civil War divided the nation's families, down the middle. Sides were chosen, and men embarked on a war of cannons, guns, and secrets. The history of Civil War spy craft, let alone the history of these four female spies, has long gone unnoticed in popular culture. Karen Abbott brings their stories to life through her exhaustive research and dynamic handling of true events. Drawing from a wealth of primary source material, including personal archives, letters, memoirs, diaries, first-hand newspaper accounts, maps, photographs, and numerous books published since the war, Abbott traces the steps of her heroines and reveals the enormous impacts they had upon the course of the war. After shooting down a Union soldier in her front hall with a pocket pistol, Belle Boyd became a courier and blockage runner for the Confederate army. Emma Edmonds cut off her hair and assumed the identity of Frank Thompson in order to escape her overbearing father and enlist in the Union army. Before the war, Elizabeth Van Lew spent much of her inheritance buying slaves in order to free them, and when her state seceded, she became a dramatic decoy and orchestrated one of the largest prison breaks in history. Rose O'Neale Greenhow gathered intelligence for the Confederacy by sleeping with a gamut of powerful men, and organized her own network of sources and accomplices to carry her carefully-won information. With Abbott's trademark sense of humor, and impeccably researched story, she has written a revealing and rollicking account sure to please her fans and longtime Civil War buffs.
