BETRAYED!

Continuing the post–Civil War tale begun in Bigger (1994) and continued in Sooner (1998), Calvert takes young Tyler Bohannon, along with his ex-slave companion Isaac Peerce and dog Sooner, from Missouri to California. Already feeling wronged by his father, who had abandoned the family to fight in the war, and his mother, for remarrying, Tyler gets more bees in his bonnet when a keelboat captain treacherously trades him and Isaac to a group of Sioux. Then, adding insult to injury, Isaac gets far better treatment because his dark skin and woolly hair amaze their captors. Worst of all, when Tyler talks about escaping their enslavement, Isaac is reluctant to leave. Calvert hammers the irony of the role reversal into the ground, and fills Tyler so full of resentment that he comes across as little more than a walking sense of aggrievance. He’s also a bully; not only does he eventually browbeat Isaac into slipping away with him, but, deeply shocked by a white orphan’s disinterest in returning to white society, tries to drag her along too. In a quick, tidy resolution, the author brings Tyler and Isaac to Fort Benton, where they find the keelboat captain dying and Tyler’s stepfather waiting with fresh supplies, then sends the two travelers on to California in an afterword. This is billed as the final volume of a trilogy, but except for Tyler showing some signs of letting his resentment go, there’s little sense of closure. Weak. (Fiction. 11-13)