Collateral damage

Civil is the last thing you'd call the War Between the States. From 1861 to 1865, more Americans died at the hands of their fellow citizens than have been killed in all subsequent combat abroad. Even by modern standards of carnage, the hallowed battles at Antietam and Gettysburg still sound unimaginably deadly.

But those epics reverberate only in the background of "Enemy Women," Paulette Jiles's debut novel about the Civil War. Her tale skirts along the border of history, the bloody footnotes of violence across southeastern Missouri. A nominal slave state that never seceded, Missouri played reluctant host to Confederate and Union militias that stormed through the Ozarks in a reign of terror that knew no discipline or mercy. In a climate where neutrality was not tolerated, poor farming families found themselves harassed by thieves and murderers who felt legitimized by impromptu uniforms and homemade flags.

Jiles's story follows the alarmingly common tragedy of Adair Colley, an 18-year-old girl. Since the death of their mother, the Colley children and their father have struggled with some success to keep their humble farm running. Like the vast majority of Missourians, they own no slaves. They pursue no political opinions beyond wanting to be left alone.

But in the thicket of revenge and avarice grown up around them, that independence is no protection. When "Captain" Tom Perth and his Union militia descend on the Colleys, they see only "Rebel sympathizers." This is martial law, which these thugs take as a license to steal and murder with impunity. They beat Mr. Colley unconscious with a wagon spoke and drag him away, shoot or scatter his animals, loot the house, and burn down the barn.

Adair and her younger sisters find themselves in a blank-eyed line of refugees, trudging toward Iron Mountain 120 miles north. These victims of militias from both sides hope to find shelter near the Union garrison; the Colley girls want some word about their father's fate.

However, a minor argument with a fellow traveler complicates Adair's life even more. Accusations of spying, sabotage, or sympathy - cheap to produce, impossible to disprove - fuel a subterranean industry of revenge among these desperate people. "It was in that stream of walkers lone and frozen every one that someone denounced her to the Yankees." As soon as she identifies herself at the garrison to locate her father, she's arrested and sent to a prison in St. Louis for "enemy women."

Jiles is a poet, but she proves herself here a remarkably effective historian, too. Each of the brief chapters in this book begins with excerpts from Civil War letters, military reports, and newspaper articles that fill in the real-life context of Adair's experience with harrowing effect.

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