“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

“You know what it means when there is Paulette Jiles inside? Be smart. Open the book.” — Gordon Lish

“ENEMY WOMEN...has a Homeresque feel to it. Like something written by an old soul.” — Carolyn Chute

“Jiles has created an unsentimental yet tender world of destruction, despair, and hope that’s a joy to inhabit.” — Entertainment Weekly

“Comparing Enemy Women to Cold Mountain doesn’t quite do Jiles’s novel justice.” — Washington Post

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 that tears apart her family and forces her and her sisters to flee. The treachery of a fellow traveler, however, brings about her arrest, and she is caged with the criminal and deranged in a filthy women’s prison.

But young Adair finds that love can live even in a place of horror and despair. Her interrogator, a Union major, falls in love with her and vows to return for her when the fighting is over. Before he leaves for battle, he bestows upon her a precious gift: freedom.

Now an escaped "enemy woman," Adair must make her harrowing way south buoyed by a promise . . . seeking a home and a family that may be nothing more than a memory.

Paulette Jiles is a novelist, poet, and memoirist. She is the author of Cousins, a memoir, and the novels Enemy Women, Stormy Weather, The Color of Lightning, Lighthouse Island, and News of the World, which was a finalist for the 2016 National Book Award. She lives on a ranch near San Antonio, Texas.