Our group was nearly evenly split between those who loved the book and those who didn't. I didn't. On the plus side, it is an interesting aspect of the Civil War -- Jewish spies on both sides. And as one of our members mentioned, the book did a good job of "normalizing" the characters -- showing all as good and bad, flawed in their own ways. On the down side, I thought the first half read like a romance novel. I was particularly annoyed by certain phrases repeated often and throughout the book (e.g., Southern young ladies tucking errant curls behind their ears, our "hero" seeing things from his one good eye). The situations often seemed implausible, although as some members mentioned, that is part of the point -- are we the same people from one night to another.

This book had a great deal of interesting information about the Civil War told in a wonderful story of a young man who comes of age during these troubling times. It was an interesting twist on the subject with information not normally thought of when thinking about the Civil War.