Here are 100 books that Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee fans have personally recommended if you like
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.
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I was never a fan of superheroes, not even as a child. My heroes had to be credible, human, acceptably flawed yet redeemable by a personal moral code that ultimately defined their actions. The heroes in my favorite books are of this ilk, determined to pursue the right thing, regardless of how life challenges them. It speaks to how I’ve tried to live my life–and still do.
Not necessarily a fan of Westerns, I loved this original story.
Set in post-Civil War, eastern Texas, an unlikely hero, Jefferson Kyle Kidd is enjoined to return a young white girl, rescued from Indians, to living relatives. Initially reluctant, Kidd commits himself to his mission regardless of challenge.
I love it when I find myself there in a story. I found myself swallowed by the challenges they faced, my attention (and tension) rising with each one. I also love it when I find myself rooting for the characters as I did with this believable story.
Though there is action, I loved that it was Kidd’s quick-witted intelligence (and that of the girl) that set the story apart.
In the aftermath of the Civil War, an aging itinerant news reader agrees to transport a young captive of the Kiowa back to her people in this exquisitely rendered, morally complex, multilayered novel of historical fiction from the author of Enemy Women that explores the boundaries of family, responsibility, honor, and trust. In the wake of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels through northern Texas, giving live readings from newspapers to paying audiences hungry for news of the world. An elderly widower who has lived through three wars and fought in two of them, the captain enjoys his…
I grew up in Boston and New York and currently live in Montreal. I have worked primarily in writing performance texts and plays. I founded the performance company Bluemouth Inc., with whom I have written and staged over a dozen works. In 2018, I completed an MFA in Creative Writing at Concordia University, where I was awarded the Dean of Arts and Sciences Award for Excellence in Creative Writing. As for my expertise in compiling this list, I am the daughter of a strong force-of-nature woman who fought for what she had and taught her kids they can get through anything as long as they have humor, music, and books.
This book was recommended to me by my firefighter brother, who often reads what I call “he-man” books. The titles always have words like mutiny, bullets, gangsters, firestorm, etc. So, when he suggested I read this book, I had my reservations. (In fairness, the books he recommends consistently end up on my list of all-time favorites–I guess that’s what I get for pre-judging!) In any case, over the years, I have learned the one thing we both love in a protagonist–and now I have a name for it–is grit. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.
There is no knowing what lies in a man's heart. On a trip to buy ponies, Frank Ross is killed by one of his own workers. Tom Chaney shoots him down in the street for a horse, $150 cash, and two Californian gold pieces. Ross's unusually mature and single-minded fourteen-year-old daughter Mattie travels to claim his body, and finds that the authorities are doing nothing to find Chaney. Then she hears of Rooster - a man, she's told, who has grit - and convinces him to join her in a quest into dark, dangerous Indian territory to hunt Chaney down…
I’ve been writing crime stories since I was a child. They entertained me and helped me cope with a lot of family strife. My first novel was published in college and sold to the movies, which got me into screenwriting, leading to writing hundreds of hours of TV and fifty novels to date. The one thing all of my stories share is humor because I believe it’s an essential part of life–and of memorable story-telling. Humor makes characters come alive, revealing shades of personality and depths of emotion you wouldn’t otherwise see. Here are five books that taught me that it’s true and that continue to influence me as a writer.
This is my favorite book of all time, by far. It’s a sprawling, epic Western for people who don’t like Westerns. But that’s just one of the many things it does brilliantly.
McMurtry was the master at finding humor in every character, no matter how loathsome or pitiful, and in every situation, no matter how heart-breaking or violent, without sacrificing or undercutting anything for a laugh. He makes the humor seem as natural as breathing, crying, or bleeding, which is a vital coping mechanism for dealing with life…it certainly is in my own.
But McMurtry taught me how to incorporate that into my storytelling and how important humor is in humanizing characters. It’s how he got me to emotionally invest in his characters and almost believe they are real. Perhaps that’s why this novel is the only one I have re-read multiple times in my life that I still wish…
Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize winning novel is a powerful, triumphant portrayal of the American West as it really was. From Texas to Montana, it follows cowboys on a grueling cattle drive through the wilderness.
It begins in the office of The Hat Creek Cattle Company of the Rio Grande. It ends as a journey into the heart of every adventurer who ever lived . . .
More than a love story, more than an adventure, Lonesome Dove is an epic: a monumental novel which embraces the spirit of the last defiant wilderness of America.
Jim Rasenberger is a writer and author of four books - Revolver, The Brilliant Disaster; America, 1908, and High Steel. He has contributed to the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Smithsonian, and other publications. A native of Washington, DC, he lives in New York City.
Originally published in 1932, this remains one of the most accessible and thought-provoking books ever written about the American West. Webb’s work rises to the level of literature, especially when describing early encounters by white Americans with the landscape and native people they met west of the 98th meridian. Few writers have captured so vividly the expansion of America from the humid and forested east to the arid west of the Great Plains. Some of Webb’s conclusions may feel a little dated, but this remains a very compelling and rewarding book.
This classic description of the interaction between the vast central plains of America and the people who lived there has, since its first publication in 1931, been one of the most influential, widely known, and controversial works in western history. Arguing that "the Great Plains environment. . .constitutes a geographic unity whose influences have been so powerful as to put a characteristic mark upon everything that survives within its borders," Webb singles out the revolver, barbed wire, and the windmill as evidence of the new phase of civilization required for settlement of that arid, treeless region. Webb draws on history,…
Jim Rasenberger is a writer and author of four books - Revolver, The Brilliant Disaster; America, 1908, and High Steel. He has contributed to the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Smithsonian, and other publications. A native of Washington, DC, he lives in New York City.
A thrilling if bumpy ride through 1846, as DeVoto tracks multiple stories of Americans who headed west at the start of the great migration. Like Webb’s Great Plains, this book — published in 1942 — is a little dated in places, but DeVoto’s vivid descriptions and strong opinions make it highly enjoyable. The general subject is the “period when the manifold possibilities of chance were shaped to converge into the inevitable,” writes DeVoto. More plainly, the book is about "some people who went west in 1846." Many of them died on the way. Some found fortune. Altogether, they left behind extraordinary history.
Year of Decision 1846 tells many fascinating stories of the U.S. explorers who began the western march from the Mississippi to the Pacific, from Canada to the annexation of Texas, California, and the southwest lands from Mexico. It is the penultimate book of a trilogy which includes Across the Wide Missouri (for which DeVoto won both the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes) and The Course of Empire. DeVoto's narrative covers the expanding Western frontier, the Mormons, the Donner party, Fremont's exploration, the Army of the West, and takes readers into Native American tribal life.
Jim Rasenberger is a writer and author of four books - Revolver, The Brilliant Disaster; America, 1908, and High Steel. He has contributed to the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Smithsonian, and other publications. A native of Washington, DC, he lives in New York City.
Posthumously published in 1970 by the University of Illinois Press, this is a must-have for anyone interested in the early years of the western migration. Unruh — who died young shortly after completing the manuscript —performs the essential task of assembling credible data about emigrants and Native Americans, and — most importantly — about their encounters with each other. Popular myths and Hollywood movies notwithstanding, Unruh makes clear that Native Americans seldom caused emigrants much harm. Indeed, emigrants of the 1840s were more likely to shoot themselves and each other by accident than require a gun for self-defense.
One of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in History and the winner of seven awards, including the John H. Dunning Prize of the American Historical Association, the Ray A. Billington Book Award of the Organization of American Historians, and the National Historical Society Book Prize.
This is very simple as to why there is passionate engagement with the themes listed within each of the five titles chosen. It's about engagement with the story which immediately comes from strongly identifying with the characters and events. The ‘identity factor’ is vital in drawing the reader in, and it's the mystery when writing a story or book which doesn’t begin with a prescribed plan. The mystery is really what creates the story and its characters, wanting to see what happens on the next page. With the reader, after having read a few pages, feeling the compulsion to read on, fully committed, emotionally involved, intrigued, and passionately caught up in the story.
I began to read this book in childhood because it was in our house (sent as a present from an Aunt living in America) and it intrigued me by the title and the illustrations of buffalos, coyotes, bears, the landscape, rivers, canyons, and the covered wagons in a circle with people and their belongings, bedding down by campfires under the starry skies […] The episodes easily captured my attention. Parkman is documenting the first settlers crossing the Mid-West Plains towards the Rockies. This is really ‘a page turner’ and classic of travelogue adventure, even though I had never heard the genre term ‘travelogue’ on first reading. It also reads like a fantasy and provides the reader who has never been to the United States with a longing to go there. Books are parallel to life and in this case for me, I did reach the Origen Trail, walked some of…
Keen observations and a graphic style characterize the author's remarkable record of a vanishing frontier. Detailed accounts of the hardships experienced while traveling across mountains and prairies; vibrant portraits of emigrants and Western wildlife; and vivid descriptions of Indian life and culture. A classic of American frontier literature.
I love America. I was born here, I live here, and I will die here. Like Walt Whitman, I am mad for this place, and I treasure the soil beneath my feet, the water I drink, and the air I breathe. Unfortunately, the soil I love so much has been marinated in the blood of previous generations, the water I drink is filled with the filthy effluent of a greedy, industry-centered culture, and the air I breathe is bitter, choking me with cancer-causing toxins. Why do I care so much about books that describe the destruction of the North American continent? Because the destruction has not stopped!!!!!!!!
The Frontiersmen by Allan Eckert was a life-changing experience for me. I read it as a youth, and Eckert’s compelling writing and meticulous research opened my eyes to just a few of the horrific events that happened right here in my backyard—events that enabled me to have a backyard in North America. This book is history as it should be written: a vivid description of true events without editorializing or interpretation. Eckert was a master storyteller who let the facts speak for themselves, and he is a personal hero of mine.
The frontiersmen were a remarkable breed of men. They were often rough and illiterate, sometimes brutal and vicious, often seeking an escape in the wilderness of mid-America from crimes committed back east. In the beautiful but deadly country which would one day come to be known as West Virginia, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, more often than not they left their bones to bleach beside forest paths or on the banks of the Ohio River, victims of Indians who claimed the vast virgin territory and strove to turn back the growing tide of whites. These frontiersmen are the subjects…
I love America. I was born here, I live here, and I will die here. Like Walt Whitman, I am mad for this place, and I treasure the soil beneath my feet, the water I drink, and the air I breathe. Unfortunately, the soil I love so much has been marinated in the blood of previous generations, the water I drink is filled with the filthy effluent of a greedy, industry-centered culture, and the air I breathe is bitter, choking me with cancer-causing toxins. Why do I care so much about books that describe the destruction of the North American continent? Because the destruction has not stopped!!!!!!!!
I first fell madly in love with the writing of Allan Eckert when I read The Crossbreed. I’m a cat person, so I was, of course, a sucker for a story about a wild kitten who was a cross between a housecat and a bobcat. Eckert’s descriptive writing enabled me to see North America through the cat’s eyes, and I still cry like a baby every time I think about the poignant ending—not because the story was so sad, but because it was so beautiful. If you have ever wondered what we lost in the destruction of the North American wilderness, just read The Crossbreed.
His mother was a housecat gone wild-a huge, tiger-striped cat who survived almost certain death at the hands of a man intent upon destroying her and her family.
His father was a bobcat-a proud, cunning creature of the Wisconsin countryside, whose tumultuous courtship with her resulted ultimately in his own violent death.
The Crossbreed himself was their largest offspring-the only one that strange litter the feral housecat bore to resemble his sire, even though his markings were those of his mother. His intelligence and ability and the combination of the better attributes of both breeds enabled him to survive in…
I love America. I was born here, I live here, and I will die here. Like Walt Whitman, I am mad for this place, and I treasure the soil beneath my feet, the water I drink, and the air I breathe. Unfortunately, the soil I love so much has been marinated in the blood of previous generations, the water I drink is filled with the filthy effluent of a greedy, industry-centered culture, and the air I breathe is bitter, choking me with cancer-causing toxins. Why do I care so much about books that describe the destruction of the North American continent? Because the destruction has not stopped!!!!!!!!
Once I became obsessed with Allan Eckert’s delicious writing, I read everything he wrote, which is how I happened upon The Silent Sky – The Incredible Extinction of the Passenger Pigeon. Oh my God!!! How did this happen? Why? Passenger pigeons were such an astonishing phenomenon—until we exterminated them. After reading this book, I went to the Cincinnati Zoo and wept before the stuffed corpse of Martha, the last of her kind, and I commissioned a lawn statue of her to serve as a memorial to the billions of her brethren who once filled the skies over my house. What have we done, what have we done...?
This nature novel, by following the hatching and lifetime experiences of the last know wild passenger pigeon, chronicles the life, natural history, and ultimate extinction of this species which was once the most abundant bird species in North America. The last wild bird was killed in 1900; the last captive bird died in 1914.
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