Son Of The Morning Star: General Custer and the Battle of Little Bighorn

Description

One of the greatest works of the American West - 'A new American classic.' Time On a scorching June Sunday in 1876, thousands of Indian warriors - Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho - converged on a grassy ridge above the valley of Montana's Little Bighorn River. On the ridge five companies of United States cavalry - 262 soldiers, comprising officers and troopers - fought desperately but hopelessly. When the guns fell silent, no soldier - including their commanding officer, Lt Col. George Armstrong Custer - had survived. Custer's Last Stand is among the most enduring events in American history - 130 years after the fact, books continue to be written and people continue to argue about even the most basic details surrounding the Little Bighorn. Evan S. Connell, whom Joyce Carol Oates has described as 'one of our most interesting and intelligent American writers', wrote what continues to be the most reliable - and compulsively readable - account of the subject. Connell makes good use of his research and novelist's eye for story and detail to re-create the heroism, foolishness and savagery of this crucial chapter in the history of the West.

Evan S. Connell, long recognised as one of the most important American literary voices, is the author of seventeen books, including Mrs. Bridge, Mr. Bridge, Deus lo Volt- A Chronicle of the Crusades and El Dorado & Other Pursuits (both available in Pimlico). He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

"Impressive in its massive presentation of information . . . "Son of the Morning Star "makes good reading--its prose is elegant, its tone the voice of dry wit, its meandering narrative skillfully crafted. Mr. Connell is above all a storyteller, and the story he tells is vastly more complicated than who did what to whom on June 25, 1876."--Page Stenger, "The New York Times Book Review" ""Son of the Morning Star" leaves the reader astonished."--"The Washington Post" "A scintillating book, thoroughly researched and brilliantly constructed."--"The Wall Street Journal "