The Jackal's Mistress

About the book

Virginia, 1864—Libby Steadman’s husband has been absent for such a long time that she can hardly remember his voice in her dreams. While she yearns for him at night, dreading his possible death in a Union prison camp, her days are occupied with overseeing a gristmill with her teenage niece, a hired hand, and his wife, all the grain they are able to produce being seized by the Confederate Army. Life in the Shenandoah Valley is precarious, with the territory constantly changing hands, control shifting back and forth like a pendulum between the North and South, and every morning Libby wakes up expecting to see her land turned into a battlefield.

And then she discovers a gravely wounded Union officer abandoned in a neighbor’s house, his hand and leg bones shattered. Captain Jonathan Weybridge of the Vermont Brigade is her enemy—but he is also a fellow human being, and Libby faces a difficult choice: Should she just leave him to perish? Or should she take the risk of aiding him, possibly committing treason, in an attempt to help him recover? And if she is successful, should she secretly help him cross Union lines in exchange for news about her own husband?

A gripping and expansive tale of two individuals navigating the boundaries of love and humanity in a harsh environment of violence, The Jackal’s Mistress is an electrifying new novel, inspired by a little-known aspect of American history, written by one of our most talented storytellers.