This is an excellently written story of a young 18 year old girl from the South whose family and home are torn apart by the Civil War and what becomes of her. As reviewers put it, "It is a gritty, memorable book, full of the things I like best in a novel-a sparky heroine, an unsentimental love story, a confident retelling of the past..." and "Enemy Women is all strength and poetry, as are history's grandest ordinary women and extraordinary writing." Personally, I was startled to learn truths about the Civil War that I had never been taught and the extreme, emotional hardships that people had to endure. I loved it.