© 2026 Blue Ridge Public Radio
Blue Ridge Mountains banner background
Your source for information and inspiration in Western North Carolina.
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

'Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover In The Civil War'

HarperCollins
Credit HarperCollins
/
HarperCollins

Frank Stasio talks to Karen Abbott about her third book, Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy

At the beginning of the Civil War, members of Abraham Lincoln’s administration were scrambling to build a strategy against the newly formed Confederate Army. 

But they soon became aware of an unforeseen threat to their military operations: female spies. 

Hundreds of women moved goods and information across enemy lines in what would be a gender turning point in a bitterly divided country. 

Karen Abbott’s third book, Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy(HarperCollins/2014)tells the true stories of four women who went undercover to help reunite the nation, or create a new one. Abbott will be reading at Malaprop’s Bookstore in Asheville tonight at 7 p.m.

Host Frank Stasio talks with Karen Abbott about her book and how women redefined themselves in 19th century America.

Copyright 2014 North Carolina Public Radio

Will Michaels started his professional radio career at WUNC.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.