Liar Temptress Soldier Spy Summary

Review of "Liar Temptress Soldier Spy"
Book written by Karen Abbott
Harper Perennial, September 8, 2015.
Rebecca Stewart.

This report is based upon the book Liar Temptress Soldier Spy written by Karen Abbott. This book is published by Harper Perennial Publishers and is copyrighted 2015 by Karen Abbott.
The book Liar Temptress Soldier Spy was written by Karen Abbott. Abbott is the New York Times bestselling author of Second City and American Rose. I found the book incredibly informational as well as entertaining. Karen Abbot writes of one of the little known aspects of the Civil War. Abbott tells the stories of four women, a widow, a socialite, an abolitionist and a farm girl all of them spies during the American Civil War. Abbott tells

the adventures of these four women throughout the war years. She uses primary source material and interviews with the spies’ descendants to tell her story.
Abbot tells the story of women spies from both sides of the conflict including what it was like to be right in the middle of the war in the case of Sarah Emma Edmonds otherwise known as Private Franklin Thompson.
Abbot goes into great detail explaining how and why each woman becomes a spy and how they accomplished their mission. Belle Boyd became a courier and spy for the Confederate army after shooting a Union soldier in her front hall with a pocket pistol, Boyd used her charms to seduce men on both sides. Cutting off her hair and assuming the identity of a man Emma Edmonds enlisted as a Union private. Edmonds was witness to one of the bloodiest battles in the Civil War. Rose O’Neal Greenhow a beautiful widow, engaged in affairs with Northern politicians to gather intelligence for the Confederacy. Using her young daughter to send the information to Southern generals. Orchestrating a far-reaching espionage ring the wealthy Richmond abolitionist Elizabeth Van Lew used her Southern manners to run the ring right in front of the suspicious rebel detectives.
I found this book very engaging, it gave me insight into women’s roles during the Civil War and how they changed when then the men in their lives enlisted in the Union and Confederate armies. I felt it added to the course work for this class by adding the little talked about topic of women and the role they played in the Civil War.

Works Cited
Abbott, Karen. Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War. Harper Perennial Publishers, 2015