Tart-tongued, sassy and smart, 18-year-old Adair Colley may take no prisoners when it comes to dealing with fools and Yankees; but in 1863, the brutal Union Militia certainly does – that is after executing, raping, and beheading countless Missouri civilians including women and children – often for nothing more than sending cookies and warm socks in “care boxes” to their Confederate sons.
When following the savage beating of her father, Adair questions the statutes of martial law, she is banished to an infamous federal detention center in St. Louis for enemy women. There, conflicted Union Major William Neumann, demands Colley’s written confession as a Confederate spy. Adair would rather die of the consumption, already seeping into her lungs. Instead, she chooses to write a fable of her short happy life before General William T. Sherman’s implementation of “total war” and devastation upon innocent Missouri citizens. Neumann is enchanted beyond reason with the provoking, backtalking country girl, and orchestrates her escape.
And still, this is only half of poet-historian Paulette Jiles’ absorbing Civil War narrative. The adrenalin-pumping rest – Adair’s harrowing recovery of her beloved dun gelding Whiskey, her intrepid journey homeward through war-devastated valleys, and Neumann’s parallel quest to find her, despite his own attempt at escape (in this case the surgeon’s saw for a potentially gangrenous bullet wound) — all converge like a thousand violins playing at once.
Writing with grit, gumption, and at times, startling humor, Jiles illuminates readers with some shocking truths about the Civil War — in particular the cultural annihilation of American citizens at the hands of a sometimes less than noble Union force.