“Compelling dramatization of a Charleston woman’s secret Civil War heroics.” Booklife – Publisher’s Weekly

“Simply fascinating read from start to finish...reads with all the emotional suspense and thrills of a novel.” – Midwest Book Review

Charleston, 1861. Anna Itgen is a twenty-year-old German immigrant, newly married and expecting her first child, when cannon fire erupts from Fort Sumter and upends her world. Within months, her husband is killed at the Battle of Port Royal.

As a single mother, Anna works alongside her neighbors to survive the Union blockade, all while a Confederate prison sits within a stone's throw of her window, packed with starving Union captives. She begins slipping bread to guards and prisoners alike. Then she hides an escaped Union officer in her cellar—and finds herself facing a traitor's noose.

Choosing humanity over self-preservation, Anna Itgen risked everything for a stranger who wore the wrong uniform.

A clean read grounded in a true story, Harboring the Enemy is for readers who like Erik Larson's The Demon of Unrest and Andrew Delbanco’s The War Before the War.