She is certainly a gifted writer, and unlike all too many works of history, her prose is fast-moving and engaging. I had never heard of Karen Abbott-the pen name for Abbott Kahler-a journalist and highly acclaimed best-selling author dubbed the “pioneer of sizzle history” by USA Today. Each of these is worthy of book-length treatment, but weaving their exploits together is an effective technique that makes for a readable and compelling narrative. There is Belle Boyd, a teenage seductress with a lethal temper who serves as rebel spy and courier Emma Edmonds, who puts on trousers to masquerade as Frank Thompson and joins the Union army Rose O’Neal Greenhow, an attractive widow who romances northern politicians to obtain intel for the south and, Elizabeth Van Lew, a prominent Richmond abolitionist who maintains a sophisticated espionage ring that infiltrates the inner circles of the Confederate government.
Abbott focuses on four very different women and relates their respective stories in alternating chapters.
Author Karen Abbott seeks a welcome redress to this neglect with Liar Temptress Soldier Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War, an exciting and extremely well-written, if deeply flawed account of some ladies who made a significant contribution to the war effort, north and south. With a few notable exceptions-Clara Barton, Harriet Tubman, Mary Todd Lincoln-female figures largely appear in the literature as bit players, if they make an appearance at all. Women are conspicuously absent in most Civil War chronicles.
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