The Spy Lover by Kiana Davenport is set in the Civil War during the period from 1862 to 1872. The main characters are Johnny Tom, a Chinese immigrant brought to America to work on the railroads. He is conscripted into the Confederate army but manages to escape and fights for the Union because he hates slavery having suffered a similar existence since his arrival in America and also because he has been promised citizenship in exchange for his military service. Era Tom is Johnny's lovely and exotic daughter who is a nurse for the Confederate army. She is also spying for the Union in hopes of finding her father and because the Confederates killed her mother, kidnapped her father and abused her. The third character is Warren Petticomb, a Confederate cavalry officer who loses his arm in battle and falls in love with the beautiful Era as she nurses him back to health.

The book is beautifully written in rich and lush language. The author describes the battles and horrific army camps full of grotesquely wounded and dying soldiers with unrelenting realism while portraying its characters' emotions with great sensitivity and compassion. The author has carefully researched the book which is particularly interesting because the events are presented from the perspective of minorities who participated in the Civil War, in this case Johnny and Era Tom. The overarching theme of the book is the juxtaposition of honesty and deceit especially as it relates to Era and Warren. Their love is intense; however, Warren's devotion to the Confederate cause and Era's role as a Union spy leads inevitably to a crisis that threatens their relationship as well as their ethics. How they deal with the situation provides the reader with an absorbing literary experience.