Pros: You WILL ride with Custer via the strength of Connell's writing...
Cons: None whatsoever....
The Bottom Line: One of the BEST history books ever written. A master novelist - Evan Connell - has created a monumental work that everyone can appreciate and relish.
Bonies7's Full Review: Evan Connell - Son of the Morning Star
How many books have you read in your lifetime that were truly impossible to put down?
You know - the kind that you find yourself diving into with such reckless abandon that you lose sight of the time and of everything else that is going on around you.
Evan S. Connell's Son of the Morning Star (ISBN: 0-86547-160-6), first published in 1984 by North Point Press, is that kind of book. Connell, a master novelist born in 1924, is the type of writer that paints mind pictures as you read that will surpass your wildest expectations.
Here he has taken a man known to most as a "legend" - George Armstrong Custer - and turned him into what he really was before and at the famous Battle of the Little Bighorn.
A man.
A man full of contradictions. A fighter. A leader. A martinet. A hunter. An egotist. A devoted husband. A family man to his brother and cousins. An officer. A hero. A glory hound.
And ultimately, the most famous cavalry officer of the Indian Wars. He actually found the "glory" he so wanted after his death - when his name became known to every American because of the loss of his command in Montana Territory in the centennial year of 1876.
What Connell has done with his masterful telling of Custer's story is to share the small details that make the big story so realistic. As an example, we read how the young Crow scout Curly was the last man to see Custer alive, and how he was told to leave the field of battle by Mitch Bouyer.
Bouyer's last words were prophetic. "Go to the other soldiers and tell them that all are killed. That man (pointing toward Custer) will stop at nothing. He is going to take us right into the village. We have no chance at all."
The village in question was probably the largest gathering of Indian tribes in the history of the West. Estimates have ranged from 3,000 to 8,000 warriors. Foolish Custer mistakenly believed there to be many less, and his blustery bravado doomed his men.
And - as is so often the case with world renown history - you KNOW how it ends before you open the first page. But what I did not know until I had the distinct pleasure to read Connell's work is that the soldiers and officers of the Seventh Cavalry were such real life individuals. They were not simply robot soldiers unquestionably marching to their deaths, but flesh and blood humans who come charging off the pages of this book like your neighbors - and your friends.
The book details with uncanny detail the weeks and final days leading up to the battle. We meet the characters and learn their strengths and weaknesses as if we were sitting beside them as they heated their coffee to ward off the cool nights. All of the warts of these remarkable men are brought to the mind's eye as the story unfolds, and Connell makes you feel like a member of the troop.
His meticulous research is Pulitzer Prize worthy, and there's not an ounce of pure speculation on the 400 plus pages that tell the tale. But the pleasure of the read is one of amazement. Amazement that one writer had the talent to take a historical moment and craft it such that any reader would find the story as magnetic to the mind as any fictional telling could ever conjure.
Did you know that Custer had his eardrums broken after his death by Indian squaws who wanted him to "hear better" in the afterlife? He had broken a promise made over a peace pipe with the Cheyenne Indian leaders seven years before, and his death was the ultimate act in an eerie sequence of events. At the earlier meeting with the Cheyenne, a medicine man had told Custer that if he broke the peace and made war again with the Cheyenne, then he would be killed.
And he was.
But Connell's work does not dwell on the death - but on the life of the man. The life of a young man, by today's standards, who had tasted glory as a 23 year old General in the Civil War and never lost the zest for acquiring an even greater reputation.
Connell draws on diaries of both sides to paint a 360 degree picture of the high water mark of the Indian tribe's last attempt to break free of the white man's reins. Amazingly, the Indians victory was to be their downfall, as public sentiment went totally against them after Little Bighorn, and they were soon overwhelmed by vengeance seeking troops throughout their homeland.
Do you like history?
Do you like prose that is interesting, thorough, compelling and crafted superbly?
Do you have a library near you that you could stop by in the next day or two?
Well, then write down Son of the Morning Star on your "to do" list, and set aside enough hours to read it at one setting, since I seriously doubt you'll be able to put it down.
Connell's masterpiece is one of the five best books I've ever read in a lifetime love affair with books.
Custer s Last Stand is among the most enduring events in American history--more than one hundred years after the fact, books continue to be written an...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
Custer s Last Stand is among the most enduring events in American history--more than one hundred years after the fact, books continue to be written an...More at Buy.com
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