A Road We Do Not Know: A Novel of Custer at Little Bighorn

As the sun rises on the barren hills of the Dakota Territory, there is nothing to distinguish this from any other hot summer day in the year of the nation's Centennial. In America's great cities, preparations are being made to celebrate a century of independence. But a thousand miles away, there are other Americans with little to celebrate. They are the dispossessed, Lakota Sioux, Cheyennes, and Arapahos. With the coming of summer, the first Americans have fled the reservation - the hated "white man's island" - in their thousands, following the vanishing buffalo and trying to put as much distance as they can between themselves and a civilization that threatens their very existence. But as they move deep into their traditional hunting grounds of the Dakota Territory, the Lakota Sioux and their friends are being pursued by a tenacious foe. George Armstrong Custer, the "Boy General" of Civil War fame, and his vaunted Seventh Cavalry are part of a three-pronged assault designed to trap the hostiles between them. Leading the advance is Lieutenant Charles Varnum, four years out of West Point and Custer's Chief of Indian Scouts. Puzzled by the growing fondness he feels for his Crow and Ree companions, and awed by Custer's nonchalance, Varnum worries about his own competence in the coming fight. Also in the ranks of the Seventh Cavalry is a man who is as confident of his own abilities as he is contemptuous of Custer's. Captain Frederick Benteen is a stalwart old cavalry officer and a bitter foe of the man the Lakota call "Long Hair". In the coming hours, Benteen will make a critical decision that may well change the course of American history. A few miles away and invisible to all but Varnum'sCrow and Ree scouts lies the largest encampment of hostile tribes in the history of North America. Unaware of Custer's approach, the camp luxuriates in the freedom of their old ways. But beneath its tranquil surface, the camp is a maelstrom of discontent. Gall, the veteran warrior and devoted family man, has begun to question the wisdom and motivations of Sitting Bull's belligerent opposition to the whites and worries about its consequences for the Lakota nation. Sitting Bull, the prophet and spiritual conscience of the Lakotas, is haunted by visions and tortured by self-doubt. And the enigmatic Crazy Horse, a fierce warrior and reluctant leader, grows ever more distant and morose. Torn by rival political factions and personal animosities, the Lakota Nation carries within it seeds of its own destruction. In a few short hours two cultures will clash on the sunbaked hills of Montana along the river known to the Lakotas as the Greasy Grass and to the whites as Little Bighorn.