A novel about a landmark battle that’s too disorganized to make anything of its intriguing parts.
A debut historical novel from U.S. Marine Sumrall that retells the story of Custer’s “Last Stand” in savage detail.
Little Big Horn is as familiar a battle as any in American history. The utter failure of the 1876 campaign, in which U.S. Army Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer led a force of some 700 cavalry soldiers against a much larger number of Lakota and Cheyenne warriors, has lodged it in the nation’s mythology. It stands out against its larger historical context, the Great Sioux War, which was actually a total victory for the American government. Still, the conflict made heroes out of some Native American leaders, including Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, the Hunkpapa Lakota holy man whose showdown with Custer lies at the center of this novel. Sumrall’s version of Sitting Bull is drawn straight from legend; he’s a powerful magician who, through ancient rites, can channel gods and see the future, and he spends much of the book in a trance, mutilating whatever is at his disposal. The novel gives Sitting Bull’s warriors similarly dramatic treatment, and, with a few exceptions, they are more creatures than men: muscly, painted killers who feast on human flesh. Custer, on the other hand, is all-too-human—an egomaniac with presidential aspirations. Although readers are told that Custer is a great war hero, Sumrall makes no effort to make any of the lieutenant-colonel’s command decisions seem reasonable. The book distractingly focuses on sexually transmitted diseases; Custer himself has a gonorrheal infection, and the rest of his command is syphilitic. One very exciting battle scene is interrupted when a soldier leaves his post to painfully relieve himself. The novel does contain some engaging historical details, such as a description of the Far West steamboat (“The Far West had set numerous speed records and had the ability to crawl over sandbars by use of steam capstans and spars”), as well as a few memorable images that stick in the imagination, as when Maj. Marcus Reno, with brain matter and blood covering his face, refuses to dismount his horse when faced with a charging band of warriors. However, the novel is too poorly structured for these moments to coalesce into an intelligible whole.
A novel about a landmark battle that’s too disorganized to make anything of its intriguing parts.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0692381786
Page Count: 194
Publisher: Shanti Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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