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The Spy Lover (2012)

by Kiana Davenport(Favorite Author)

3.85 of 5 Votes: 1

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Thomas & Mercer

review 1: The Spy Lover brings the horrors of the Civil War to the forefront of Kiana Davenport's factionalized account of her family history. Johnny Tom is a "pigtail"; a Chinese immigrant sold into slavery, then captured as a prisoner of war and eventually fighting for the North. His daughter, Era, is a nurse in the South, but has become a spy for the North in an attempt to find her father. Warren is a soldier fighting for the South. Their stories are told in alternating chapters as their paths intertwine and diverge. The writing is good and the plot engaging. An interesting part of the story describes the work of southern women in the poppy fields, a part of the backstory of the Civil War that I had not encountered before in my reading. Although, the awful toll of Civil War battl... morees was important to the story, it was repetitive causing some lags in a book that was otherwise engaging.
review 2: When most of us think of the Civil War we don't think of Chinese immigrants. This book takes a look at the war through the eyes of a Chinese woman, Era Tom, whose father was in the Union Army. In order to find out information about him she is required to spy on the Confederates. So she does. But this novel never resonated with me. It was well read. The accents sounded natural not forced or caricatures. But at the same time, I never found the story that interesting. That said, if the Civil War fascinates you, reading this novel will open your eyes to a discrimination that most of us never even though about because we are so focused on the war as a war against the enslaving of African blacks, whites were not kind to the Chinese either. There were simply fewer of them. less

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