Bugles in the Afternoon (Bantam #25)

No one writes like Ernest Haycox, no one. With the possible exception of Zane Grey, no one told the story of the west better. Ernest Haycox had a feel for the written word, and a flair for the dramatic, and that never expresses itself any better in this "historical" novel about Custer's last stand at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Around this event Ernest Haycox places two important characters, Kern Shafter, and Josephine Russell. He is a man with a past, and you have to decide if he is running away from something or running toward something. She is a complete enigma even though she is a western girl returned from the east. The two of them make quite a couple to follow as the book enfolds. Shafter rejoins the army, and she has an insatiable curiosity about him that kept her comparing him and Lieutenant Garnett--the man Shafter had something against, and caused Shafter to be type of man he was. The climax of course happens at the Battle, and when the dust and smoke are cleared away, the living must continue on living. Ernest Haycox's version of the battle and the aftermath are perhaps the most accurate that have ever been put to pen and paper, as he was a consummate historian; and all of his novels show his attention to detail. This is an excellent work.