American by Blood

Henry Strozier's clear vocals give credibility to Huebner's horrific story of vengeance and pathos in the aftermath of the Little Bighorn Massacre. Strozier portrays the scouting party of James Bradley, who was the first to discover the massacre; William Gentle, who is fascinated by the Indians they're hunting; and August Huebner, who is escaping the slums of the recently industrialized East. With seamless pacing and a strong, gritty voice Strozier adds dimension to the many male characters by altering his tone, adopting various regional accents, and varying the intensity of his delivery. As their bloody mission slowly drives the men mad, listeners will find themselves embroiled in this grim, merciless story filled with rape, torture, mutilation--all the carnage of war. S.C.A. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

February 28, 2000
One of the biggest mistakes an aspiring writer can make is to become grossly enamored of a well-established literary figure. Huebner's first novel shows a clear admiration of the sometimes quirky but highly recognizable style of Cormac McCarthy and thereby undermines what could have been a marvelous, horrific tale of vengeance and pathos in the aftermath of the Little Bighorn Massacre. At the opening, James Bradley--documented as the first officer to discover the ravages of Custer's Seventh Cavalry--rides onto the bloody battlefield accompanied by two privates, William Gentle and August Huebner, the author's great-great- grandfather. The men report the result of Custer's strategic blunder, then continue to try to track down the hostile Sioux and Cheyenne and ultimately the Nez Perce, as the Indians fight a running, retreating series of battles across the mountains and prairies of Montana and South Dakota, trying to escape to Canada. The soldiers form a triumvirate point of view, with Bradley as the voice of duty, Huebner the voice of reason and Gentle (the soldier credited ultimately with the murder of Crazy Horse) the voice of mystical frontier pragmatism. Punctuated with beautiful descriptive passages of wilderness flora and fauna, the novel graphically details the skirmishes that followed the military disaster on the Greasy Grass, revealing with rare candor the inner thoughts of American troopers involved in a deadly struggle with a desperate foe. Unfortunately, Huebner's decision to eschew conventional punctuation, his verbal anachronisms and a few outright historical errors (the Comanche were not at Little Bighorn) render the story difficult to follow. Huebner clearly has McCarthy's rhythms down, but unlike the older writer, Huebner doesn't quite get the melody right. And that's a pity, for he certainly has an original and potentially inspiring lyric in mind. Agent, Simon Green. Foreign rights sold in U.K. and Germany.