In the summer of 1910, a young woman from Indiana set out to solve a mystery. It involved an oddball millionaire, a volume of Shakespeare's plays, and the secret world of codes and ciphers. Within a year, she had transformed herself into one of America's top code breakers.

During World War I, Elizebeth Smith Friedman cracked thousands of messages, but that was only the beginning of her brilliant career. In the 1920s and 1930s, she pitted her wits against the mob. When World War I| broke out, she hunted Nazi spies.

Despite her fame, she was a woman of many secrets, and later she was pushed into the shadows. To get the true measure of her hidden life, you must delve deep, the way a code breaker would, searching for the truth that lies just out of sight.

This biography by award-winning historian Amy Butler Greenfield is the riveting tale of an overlooked American heroine-a real-life mystery, love story, and feminist adventure.

From the dust jacket