GERONIMO

A wonderful fictional-biography of the terrible old Apache war chief. Mr. Wyatt's careful, sympathetic prose style and Alan Houser's rather spiritual line drawings take Geronimo through his childhood escapades, initiation into manhood, his first unsuccessful raid, his marriage to the maid Alope, the long period of constant raids on the U. S. Army, his final captivity and exile in Florida. There is skill in the description of Apache customs and swiftness in the accounts of raids and hunting parties. White-Indian relationships are treated without bias -- both the Army's unfriendly attitude and Geronimo's unreasonable terrorisms are criticized. Too, there is an excellent historical cross section with the author's smooth tying in of the other elements, the Mexican Wars, Kit Carson, the acclaim of President Theodore Roosevelt in Washington, in Geronimo's life. And Geronimo himself as a rash boy, as a lover, as a madman bent on mass extermination, as a skillful hunter and leader and as an old chief with only memories always emerges as a vital person.