Hardcover Cloth 321 pages. Condition Very Good Dust Jacket Very Good. Stated first edition First printing 2002 with corresponding number line. Lovely purple boards with black spine and gilt embossing shows off this Clean, tight, square copy with no marks, highlights or bookplates. Book has light shelf wear. Edges are stained. An unclipped dust jacket with the slight shelf wear - a few scrapes, wrinkles and chips. Not an ex-library, book club or remainder copy.

Inscribed by author on title page.

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 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 an American poet and novelist. Born in Salem, Missouri, she was educated at the University of Missouri with a degree in Romance Lanugages. Jiles lives in the Texas Hill Country on a small ranch.