Son of the Morning Star

I loved this book enough to read it twice. In fact, felt compelled to read it twice because of Connell’s amazing portrayal of Custer and dozens of other figures, both American and Native American, both well-known and obscure.

The battle of the Little Bighorn lasted only a few hours but had an amazing impact, and Connell tells the story with remarkable originality.     

Any set of books dealing with the wresting of the West from the elements and Native American tribes must include at least one account of the flamboyantly outrageous George Armstrong Custer and his 1876 disaster at Little Bighorn. Evan Connell’s ranks among the most readable and reliable, offering vivid portraits of the cast of characters involved on both sides. At West Point, Connell writes, Custer “unfurled less like a flower than a weed.” Rarely does a historian write with the panache of a novelist: “For Custer’s troops, locked inside a twisting circle, this show concluded as it did for those… show more.

A rare foray into non-fiction by an accomplished poet and novelist, Son of the Morning Star approaches its subject via a rambling journey through the Old American West. It meanders more than the snaking Little Bighorn River itself, yet every digression helps to build a wonderfully vivid sense of time and place. Deploying a wry, conversational style, Connell analyses the historical and cultural background to ‘Custer’s Last Stand’, and explores the personalities of the key protagonists, both among Custer’s Seventh Cavalry, and the Native American tribes of the Great Plains who fought against them. At times both funny and shocking,… show more.