A WOUNDED THING MUST HIDE

An eccentric though highly readable blend of history, travelogue, and memoir that follows a wobbly trail behind George Armstrong Custer’s globetrotting widow.

Enigmatic and a little shy, Libbie Custer was thrust into the spotlight following her husband’s conversion from war hero to greasy spot on the grass of the Little Big Horn, and for the next 60 years, she labored endlessly to rehabilitate Custer’s reputation while mixing uneasily with the crowned heads of Europe and the New York plutocracy. It was an uphill battle at the start, since, writes English novelist Poolman, even “President Grant, within a week of the disaster, was telling all who would listen that it was Custer who was responsible—and Custer alone—for the deaths of so many.” She did a reasonably good job of it, though Custer still has the checkered reputation in death that he did in life. Gracefully written, this is less a straightforward biography of Libbie Custer (who deserves one—after all, even Custer’s horse has been the subject of a booklength treatment) than an elliptical meditation on all sorts of matters of life and death, the moral lesson of which comes early on in Poolman’s pages: “Perhaps . . . the only thing to be learned from the memory in our lives of the dead is that they are there and we are here. Maybe life—death—really is as simple and as final as that.” Poolman follows a zigzag path across continents, seeking Libbie Custer, but, more, seeking himself through all kinds of lenses, including the blurry vision of his often drunk, Custer-obsessed father; in the end, while meditative, this is not without its humorous moments, and reminiscent of Ross McElwee’s curious documentary film Sherman’s March (1986)—and just as brilliant.

It may puzzle readers of Son of the Morning Star and fans of They Died with Their Boots On, but this is an intriguing addition to the Custer literature all the same.