Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy is a riveting non-fiction book about four women who conducted espionage (and, in one case, fought undercover as a soldier) in the Civil War. Two women worked for the North and two for the South. The book is interesting and exciting and paints incredible pictures of very different women who, love them or hate them, lived unusual lives of great political and personal passion and daring. Here’s a look at the four women profiled in the book:

Rose O’Neal Greenhow (Confederacy): Rose was a society woman from the South with a knack for flirting with Northern men in power. She made no secret of her secessionist views and she was hideously, virulently, very vocally racist, even by the standards of the time and place. Rose was arrested for espionage and she was outraged, OUTRAGED, that anyone would search the home and possessions of a defenseless woman and lock her up (Rose, honey, YOU’RE A SPY).

Rose was eventually freed and sent by the Confederacy to France where she worked as a diplomat. Rose was an exasperating, infuriating figure but her ability to ferret out information and smuggle it into the right hands is undeniable.

Belle Boyd (Confederacy): It’s interesting that both Belle and Rose were able to get all kinds of secrets from men despite being completely open about their animosity towards the North. Belle was a headstrong teenager who longed for freedom, drama, attention, and adventure. She combined flirting with Union officers to get information with daredevil rides through woods and, in one occasion, across a battlefield, to deliver information. Her persona was so popular that later she went on the lecture tour circuit, and she faced competition by multiple imposters.

Elizabeth Van Lew (Union): Elizabeth was a Union supporter in a Confederate town, and as such her neighbors always held her in suspicion. Unlike Belle and Rose, Elizabeth was neither a beauty nor a flirt, but she was good at using flattery, subterfuge, a network of spies, and a hidden room to smuggle secrets and Confederate prisoners to safety. Elizabeth was an ardent abolitionist. She was shunned by her Southern neighbors after the war (they called her “Crazy Bet”) but considered a hero by the North.

Emma Edmondson (Union): When Emma was a child, a tinker gave her a book in which the heroine dressed as a man and had adventures. When Emma’s father threatened to marry her to a neighbor, she dressed as a man and ran away from home, and eventually joined the war as “Frank Thompson”.

In a staggeringly meta moment, she was recruited from the ranks to be a spy for the Union army, and disguised herself as a woman – but not as herself, because that might have been to close to her disguise as Frank. So she was a woman disguised as a man disguised as a woman. After the war she wrote an autobiography and successfully appealed for a pension from the army.

I’ve been meaning to read this book since it first came out in 2014, but I assumed it would take a long time to read since it’s a pretty hefty hardback and I read non-fiction more slowly than I do fiction. Let me tell you, I ate that thing up in less than three days. It was as exciting as any thriller while also being informative and thought provoking. I can’t over-state how entertaining (and sometimes heartbreaking, and horrifying, and infuriating, and inspiring) this book was.

In addition to learning about the four women, the book did a great job of clarifying just how precarious the war was, and how political divisions cut through counties, towns, and families. Whenever possible, the book puts things in concrete terms. It’s one thing to read that the war was one in which “brother fought brother.” It’s easier to understand the trauma and legacy of the Civil War when specifics are used. Reading that Mary Todd Lincoln had a brother, three half-brothers, and a brother-in-law in the Confederate army, and that one of the Confederate generals had a son in the Union Army brought the emotional ugliness of the war home in a way that abstractions can’t.

Along with some harrowing details about the war, there are espionage stories that put James Bond to shame. Rose used to send her couriers around town with tiny, coded messages hidden in their elaborate hair-dos. Women used to smuggle weapons by lacing swords and guns through the wires of their hoop skirts – then they pulled their dress over the arsenal and walked quite openly around town until they could drop off the weaponry. Elizabeth hid messages in hollow eggs and hid people in wagons under piles of manure (ewww).

Meanwhile, women fought as soldiers for all kinds of reasons – for the pay, because of their ideals, to escape a situation, to be with a lover or relative. One couple signed up together on their honeymoon (no word on the outcome). One woman was caught when she gave birth while on picket duty. Emma thought she’d be caught by a doctor when she was recruited to be a spy, because she had to pass a medical examination. Fortunately, the doctor put greater stock in phrenology than anatomy:

“He determined, finally, that “Frank Thompson indeed had the head of a man, with ‘finely developed’ organs of secretiveness and combativeness.”

 

You need not be a major history buff to enjoy this book and you don’t have to have much prior knowledge of the Civil War to follow it. That being said, its obvious audience is people who enjoy history and who have an interest in the history of women. Wars are ugly and wretched and horrible but as this book points out, they create opportunities (and often imperatives) for women to break out of their standard roles.

The stories of these four women are representative of many more – the unknown number of women who fought as soldiers and who worked as spies, along with women who found themselves in charge of farms and businesses and who worked as nurses. This book is still only available in hardcover (or as an eBook) and the price is comparable to similar books but steep compared to my usual romance paperback budget. It’s worth every penny (and probably available at your library).