The Removes

April 1, 2018
The lives of Gen. George Armstrong Custer, his wife, Libbie, and a 15-year-old Kansas farmer's daughter converge in this historical novel about the American frontier.Soli (The Last Good Paradise, 2016, etc.) writes of an angsty Gen. "Autie" Custer pushing into the American West in the post-Civil War era, looking to retain his glory in a new kind of battle. Soli's braided narrative includes the historical figures of Custer and Libbie and opens with Anne, a fictional 15-year-old who was captured in an Indian raid on her Kansas homestead, where "it was necessary to work the fields with hoe in one hand and rifle in the other." The frontier is rough, especially for women. Anne's family is murdered, and she is held for years by the Cheyenne; Soli's writing is unsentimental about life in captivity, where Anne is starved and raped. The book is written in alternating chapters told from the third-person perspectives of Anne, Libbie, and Autie. Both Anne's and Libbie's lives are harmed by the ambitions and passions of men on both sides of the American/Indian conflict. Anne suffers at the hands of the Cheyenne, but as she bears children, she comes to identify with the Indian way of life. Early in her marriage, Libbie gets an "inkling that her savior might also be her tormentor," but she's drawn to him. The Custers' is a marriage fraught with doubt and long periods of absence while Autie leads campaigns on the American frontier, and Libbie is filled with "constant, rational dread." Autie is unquestioning of his duty but a man of impulses: "During the war he could have just as well fought for the Confederate cause; he had as many friends on both sides. Now he did not know why he fought the Indians, some of whom he also counted as friends, except that he was told to do so." Anne prays for rescue, but when it comes, it brings more heartache and men who want to use her.A sober and memorable take on the American West: its opportunities for men to wage war against each other and the land and the devastation the men's ambition wrought upon women's lives.

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May 7, 2018
Soli (The Lotus Eaters) unleashes a thrilling novel set in the violent Wild West just as the Civil War ends, when a newly formed United States set its sights on Native American territory. Onto the larger canvas of the lives of George Armstrong Custer, the soldier tasked with defeating and corralling the Natives, and his spirited wife, Libbie, is painted the horrific tale of Anne, a young daughter of settlers in the Kansas Territory. The story opens with unimaginable violence as Anne is captured and her family slaughtered by the Cheyenne, then jumps from her travails to the lives of Libbie and Custer, nicknamed “Autie.” Soli depicts Custer flailing to find a purpose after the war; his love of battle and the open prairie make him more kin to his Native “enemies” than to his own people. The Custers forge an unbreakable bond, the story swinging from Libbie’s perspective to Autie’s, and to Anne’s, who is battling simply to stay alive. Anne survives starvation, rape, and childbirth, only to eventually be brutalized by one of her own. The clash of cultures is Soli’s grand theme, and here she drives home her message that the winners are no more worthy than the losers, and that “not even brotherhood was enough to safeguard people who had what others coveted.”

April 15, 2018

The Removal Act of 1830 enabled the U.S. government to push Native Americans to give up their land peacefully or, more often, by force. Gen. George Armstrong Custer, fresh out the Civil War but still full of fire and fury, joins in the westward advance during the late 1860s. His wife, Libbie, who was sheltered as a girl, learns that she has married a philandering charmer whose craving for uncharted territory outpaces any need for society. Into the mix comes young Anne Cummins, a captive who watched as her entire homestead was destroyed by the Cheyenne. All are constantly tested in this rough new world of the untamed West, challenged with the constant possibility of death while being sustained by the will to survive. Soli (The Lotus Eaters; The Forgetting Tree) tells the story via the bloody battles of the Civil War alongside even bloodier conflicts between the Indians and their aggressors. VERDICT Finely crafted, this moving novel viscerally depicts the brutality of the Westward Expansion and the universal quest for freedom, while reminding readers of the human cost of greed. Recommended for fans of epic historical fiction. [See Prepub Alert, 12/11/17.]--Susanne Wells, Indianapolis P.L.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2018

From the author of The Lotus Eaters: two young women come into their own on the American frontier. Anne is a captive who eventually joins the Cheyenne, while Libbie heads west with her husband, George Armstrong Custer.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.