Comanche Sundown : A Novel

by Reid, Jan

• ISBN13: 9780875654225
• ISBN10: 0875654223
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-09-15
• Publisher: Texas A & M Univ Pr

Summary

Comanche Sundownis the story of the great war chief Quanah Parker, a freed slave and cowboy named Bose Ikard, and the women they love. In 1869 Quanah and Bose do their best to kill each other in a brutal fight on horseback in West Texas. But over several years, through the flash and chaos of war and killing they discover that they are friends, not enemies. They change from violent unformed youths into men of courage and decency. The son of the ferocious warrior Nocona and the tragic captive Texan Cynthia Ann Parker, Quanah suffers the wound of being slurred and rejected by many Comanches as someone of impure blood and certain bad luck. When told he cannot marry his youthful love Weckeah, he rides off and joins another band of his people in the canyonlands and plains of the Texas Panhandle. Later, when Quanah has just emerged as a war chief in a daring rout of army cavalry, in defiance of elders and tradition he elopes with Weckeah and leads a following of the wildest Comanche bunch of all. The enslaved son of a white physician, Bose is freed by the Civil War and rides on trail drives of longhorns into New Mexico Territory that are led by the pioneering Charles Goodnight. Bose winds up captured, utilized, and eventually valued by Quanah and his people. That period in young Bosers"s life brings him into intoxicating friendship with Quanahrs"s other wife, To-ha-yea, a Mescalero Apache and born heart-breaker. Comanche Sundownlays out a sprawling and plausible recast of Southwestern history that brings Pat Garrett, Billy the Kid, Bat Masterson, Colonel Ranald "Bad Hand" Mackenzie, and General William T. Sherman into one fray. In the tradition of Thomas Bergerrs"sLittle Big Man, William Styronrs"sThe Confessions of Nat Turner, Larry McMurtryrs"sLonesome Dove, and Cormac McCarthyrs"sAll the Pretty Horses, Jan Reidrs"s novel offers a rich blend of historical detail, exquisite eye for the terrain and the animals, and insight into the culture, customs, poetry, and dignity of Native Americans caught up in a desperate fight to survive.