by Paulette Jiles
This historical fiction by Paulette Jiles is set in the Missouri Ozarks near the end of the Civil War. As a border state, Missouri was overrun with lawlessness, with groups on both sides of the war raiding, murdering, and plundering. The heroine, 18-year-old Adair Colley, is the oldest of three daughters of a local justice. A band of Union soldiers beats him and arrests him as a Confederate sympathizer, and sets their house on fire. Adair and her sisters set off to find their father, but she is denounced by a horse-thieving family they meet on the road as a spy and sent to a prison in St. Louis for "enemy women." The lawyer-soldier assigned to defend her, William Neumann, falls in love with her and, when he receives orders to go to Mobile, Alabama, aids in her escape, vowing to find her again later.
At this point, the book alternates between the tales of Adair and William. His experiences in battle seem pretty realistic; her adventures trying to make her way back home are unbelievable at times, particularly for a young woman apparently suffering from tuberculosis.
This was Jiles' first novel, after publishing poetry and a memoir. That memoir, Cousins, likely inspired this book, as Jiles, born in the Missouri Ozarks, was searching for distant cousins to learn more about her father. Family stories helped form the plot. In an interview, she said,
We have no records — journals, letters or anything else — that survived the Civil War in my family on the Jiles side. All I have are their names from the census of 1860 and local records showing my great great grandfather Marquis Giles (at that time, his last name was spelled with a "G") who was a school teacher and a justice of the peace. I did use the family's first names — Marquis, Savannah, Little Mary, John Lee [the latter three are Adair's siblings]. But Adair's name came from my husband's family.
What I really liked about this book was its depiction of aspects of the Civil War I knew little about. Jiles opens each chapter with quotations from letters, journals, newspapers, and official reports from the period, relevant to the action in that chapter. Jiles spent seven years researching for this book, and it shows. I learned a lot.
© Amanda Pape - 2017
[I borrowed and returned this e-book from my university library.]
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