GERONIMO

“You will remember it all,” Geronimo says to his grandson at Fort Sill, Okla., in 1908. Imprisoned there, Geronimo is at the end of his long life, and Willie is to remember and tell Geronimo’s story: the prison trains and the forced moves, betrayals by the White Eyes, fighting against Mexican and American soldiers, removal of the Apaches from the Southwest to Florida and Geronimo’s ride in Theodore Roosevelt’s inaugural parade. But for Willie to narrate the tale is limiting, distancing the reader and sometimes making Geronimo himself seem peripheral to Willie’s own story; any potential drama is sapped from the narrative. It’s a story told rather than brought to the great, dramatic life it could have lived on the page. Also, since the heart of the narrative is the journey to Florida, maps would have helped readers follow the trek. Overall, though, this is an important, carefully researched work that will fill a gap in most collections (Fiction. 12+)