Enemy Women: A Novel - Couverture rigide

Jiles, Paulette

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0066214440 ISBN 13 : 9780066214443

Editeur : William Morrow, 2002

Synopsis

Book by Jiles Paulette

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur :

From critically acclaimed, award-winning poet and memoirist Paulette Jiles comes a debut novel of startling power and savage beauty -- an extraordinary story of survival and love in the midst of a torn nation's bitter agony.

For the Colleys of southeastern Missouri, the War Between the States is a plague that threatens devastation despite the family's avowed neutrality. For eighteen-year-old Adair Colley, it is a nightmare seen at its most terrible on the day the Union Militia arrives to set her house on fire, driving her brother into hiding and dragging her widowed father away, beaten and bloodied. Left to care for two young sisters, Adair sees no road but the one that leads away, as they start out on foot into the winter mountains in search of a safe haven.

Even the least of hopes is doomed, however, in a world forever changed, as the treachery of a fellow traveler brings about Adair's arrest on charges of “enemy collaboration.” Torn from her terrified sisters, the girl suddenly finds herself consigned to a living hell, caged with the criminal and the deranged in a filthy women's prison in St. Louis.

But young Adair is sustained by a strong heart, and love can live even in a place of horror and despair. Her interrogator, a Union major, falls in love with her and she finds herself returning her feelings despite herself. The major vows to return for her when the fighting is over, and before he returns to war, he leaves her with a last precious gift: freedom.

Weakened in body but not in spirit, Adair must now travel alone through dangerous, unknown territory -- an escaped “enemy woman” surrounded by perils and misery on all sides. She makes her harrowing way south buoyed by a promise, seeking a home and a family that may be nothing more than a memory.

Based on a little known chapter in America's bloodiest epoch, Paulette Jiles's poignant, powerful, and exquisitely rendered novel about war's collateral victims is masterful work, captivating and authentic -- a lyrical, memorable tale of endurance and sacrifice that will stand alongside Cold Mountain and other classic Civil War era-set literature for decades to come.

Revue de presse :

“ENEMY WOMEN deserves the Pulitzer Prize.” (Toronto Globe and Mail)

“I loved...it provides the greatest suspense a story can offer: will someone we’ve come to love persevere and prosper?” (Anna Quindlen)

“...remarkable happens...it becomes inspired... Adair becomes a storyteller in order to survive. And so - triumphantly - does Paulette Jiles.” (New York Times Book Review (cover))

“This is a book with backbone, written with tough, haunting eloquence.” (New York Times)

“Jiles paints the struggles of the era with the same intensity as Charles Frazier’s 1997 bestseller Cold Mountain ...” (People)

“Sure to be touted as a new COLD MOUNTAIN...stark, unsentimental, yet touching novel will not suffer in comparison.” (Publishers Weekly (starred review))

“A remarkable debut... Splendid.” (Kirkus Reviews (starred review))

“...beautifully written passages...a real page-turner.” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

“...[G]ifted Missouri historian...acutely portrays Missouri’s logistic misfortune as a hotbed of both Union and Confederate violence.” (Booklist)

“Enemy Women is all strength and poetry, as are history’s grandest ordinary women and extraordinary writing.” (Kaye Gibbons)

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: William Morrow
• Date d'édition: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0066214440
• ISBN 13: 9780066214443
• Reliure: Relié
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 336