Enemy Women

Enemy Women (2002), a historical novel by Paulette Jiles, recounts an aspect of Civil War history that many are unfamiliar with – the damage caused to civilians and civilian property by marauding, unregulated militias on both sides of the conflict. The story is told through the eyes of Adair Colley, a young woman from Missouri whose family home is razed and personal life devastated as war collateral. Each chapter begins with a historical document or series of documents from the Civil War era – letters from soldiers to their families, etc. These only relate thematically to Adair's story, but their inclusion adds fascinating nonfictional context to the plot, helping to add an air of authenticity to Enemy Women. Jiles makes an unusual choice in the novel not to enclose dialogue in quotation marks.

The Colley family lives in a clapboard home in southeastern Missouri. From the nearby hills, eighteen-year-old Adair, eldest of four siblings, watches Union and Confederate troops, over the course of seasons, travel up and down the valleys, in search of each other – more often failing to make contact than successfully engaging one another. She is tense, and so is her family, which includes a brother, John Lee, whose “withered arm” prevents him form more than watching the action. For what seems like a long time – three years – the Colley family farm is spared any damage. Finally, it happens. A Union detachment arrives on the Colley property: “a long line of riders in blue trotting in double column as they turned into the road that led to the Colley farm.” The militia assaults Adair's widowed father, a respected local schoolmaster and justice of the peace who has refused to take sides in the war. They tear him away from his family, plunder the family's reserves of food and horses, and set fire to what remains. John Lee escapes to the hills, and Adair and her two younger sisters grab what they can of what little the soldiers have left untouched and set off to find their father.

Adair believes the sisters must travel north, and she and her sisters head toward Iron Mountain – 120 miles away. On their way, they join in with "the streams of refugees afoot as if they were white trash." Adair's harsh condemnation seems to ring true, however, when a family of horse thieves with whom she's traveling falsely accuses her of being a spy for the Confederacy: an “enemy woman.” In truth, Adair, like many of the poor folk on both sides of the war, did not feel strongly allied to either side. Suddenly and forcibly separated from her little sisters, Adair is put on a train bound for the women's prison in St. Louis. The train car she is packed into is full of other forlorn women, all on their way to the prison. Like Adair, many of them were arrested under false pretenses by roving bands of lawless militiamen like those who destroyed Colley farm.



Once imprisoned, Adair, like many before her, becomes ill with tuberculosis. The conditions are horrible and cold, and she is not treated well. None of the women are. A ray of hope appears, however, in the unlikely guise of her Union interrogator – Major William Neumann. Against the odds, William, falling in love with Adair over the course of her interrogation, pledges to her that he will help free her. He tells her that he will be able to secure her release if she confesses to wrongdoing, but Adair refuses. Left no other choice, William betrays his post by helping Adair to escape the prison and flee before he is reassigned to a different position (which he had specifically requested prior to meeting Adair, as he was embarrassed not to be involved in the war in a more heroic capacity). He promises to find and marry her when the war is over.

After escaping the prison, Adair begins to search for her sisters. Eventually coming across the militia that stole her family's horses, she retrieves them. She is especially close to her own horse, Whiskey. Her relationship with Whiskey is one of the most believable and touching relationships portrayed in the story. Indeed, Jiles gives special attention to the largely unsung and tragic role that animals, especially horses, played in times of war.

Eventually, Adair makes her way back home to discover that the family farm has been taken over by squatters. Luckily, William, although injured in the war, has survived it, and makes good on his promise to reunite with Adair.



Paulette Jiles's Enemy Women is a relatively standard example of Civil War historical fiction, differing from the generic norm mostly in regard to its interpolations of historical texts and unusual formatting choices. It does, however, distinguish itself for the wealth of detail it provides about a part of war history – the lives of civilians, especially women, at the periphery of the conflict – that is little treated in literature.