Review of The Jackal's Mistress by Chris Bohjalian

The deep bond that builds between an injured Union soldier and the Virginia woman who secretly takes him in is touching and complicated, and Bohjalian doesn't make Libby's dangerous choices feel too easy. The author was inspired by a true story.

In Chris Bohjalian's newest historical fiction novel, Libby Steadman lives in Virginia on the edge of the Confederate-Union Civil War conflict. Her husband has been away fighting for the Confederacy since soon after they were married, and Libby is warden to her orphaned, strong-willed niece Jubilee. She's also living alongside a hired hand, Joseph, who became a freedman when Libby's husband's family reconsidered their stance on slavery, and his wife Sally. Together the family members work grueling hours milling grain for the Confederacy. 

Then Libby finds a gravely injured Union officer in a neighbor’s abandoned home. Because she hopes that a Union woman would take pity on her husband in the same situation, she secretly cares for Weybridge's injuries, realizing that if Confederate soldiers were aware of his presence in her home, the family would be considered traitors.

Weybridge begins to bond with each member of the household, but particularly in the case of Libby, a growing friendship adds to an impossibly complicated situation. He is married, she is married--although she's becoming more and more certain that her husband has been killed in battle--and Weybridge's mere presence is dangerous to a deadly degree.

The decision to take in Weybridge is morally clear to Libby, but the realities of the potential harm it could bring aren't lost on her. Bohjalian never makes the decision-making too easy, and the ending was not the neatly tied-up bow of a resolution I had begun to anticipate.

The story is based upon a real account of a Southern woman who helped a Union soldier during the Civil War.

I received a prepublication edition of The Jackal's Mistress courtesy of Doubleday Books and NetGalley.

More Chris Bohjalian Love

This is Chris Bohjalian’s 25th book. He also wrote Hour of the Witch and Skeletons at the Feast (a WWII-set book that I read about 15 years ago and loved).

For more Bossy reviews of books set during the Civil War, check out this link.