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

Rating:
Summary: A novel that makes real people out of the participants.
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found the footnotes to be very helpful. There were so very many more people involved besides Custer, Sitting Bull, etc. The Native Americans were families doing what families do - enjoying their day, grinding corn, cooking. They became "real," not just Lakota people. The "ordinary" soldiers also became real. I compare this book to "The Killer Angels" for "fleshing out" the participants. Again, these were real people. I believe that Mr. Chiaventone did an excellent job of creating dialog that is believable based on the situation and the times. I have recommended this book to many people and it is one that I intend to read again.

Rating:
Summary: A gripping you-are-there account. Riveting!!
Review: It's uncanny how well Chiaventone blends fact (much of which has never appeared in novel form) with well informed speculation. The comparison to "The Killer Angels" is especially apropos, in that the reader is immersed in a riveting you-are-there approach to events which we have come to take for granted as a familiar part of our heritage. But the detail and realism shaped by Chiaventone's descriptive power is decidedly unnerving as these men - native and invader - are gripped in their death struggle. One feels as if they might still be there in the dust and the heat on that hill...

Rating:
Summary: You have to love the cavalry
Review: Not since May 29, 1981, the day I finished The Killer Angels, have I been so overwhelmed by the ending of a military action novel as I was by this book. It is fiction only because it supplies lotsa dialogue for June 25, 1876--the day of Custer's Last Stand. This book presents all the events as very concentrated in time, whereas I before reading it had the impression the events were spread over several days. I am confident this book is pretty accurate as to what happened. This is a very poignant book, and made me feel I was with the people on that fateful day. Most worthwhile reading.

Rating:
Summary: A book to be savored
Review: Not since May 29, 1981, the day I finished The Killer Angels, have I been so overwhelmed by the ending of a military action novel as I was by this book. It is fiction only because it supplies lotsa dialogue for June 25, 1876--the day of Custer's Last Stand. This book presents all the events as very concentrated in time, whereas I before reading it had the impression the events were spread over several days. I am confident this book is pretty accurate as to what happened. This is a very poignant book, and made me feel I was with the people on that fateful day. Most worthwhile reading.

Rating:
Summary: First Rate
Review: Readers will feel the heat, taste the dust, and experince the fear and confusion in this first novel by Frederick Chiaventone. This novel places you on the plains and on the battlefield as primary and secondary characters come alive and stuggle with varing degrees of human fobles. George Custer and Marcus Reno come alive as never before and have never been treated as fairly. Neither whites or Indians are made the villains but instead are humans struggling with the changing times of history. When Custer first sees the immensity of the Indian village before him and gasps ' Good God' you will know that this novel has surpassed the ordinary and has joined such novels as " The Killer Angels" in bring history alive.Having been raised in the Midwest it is a pleasure to read a novel in which the Indians are not made out as villains and the whites are not considered doomed heros. This nicely balanced novel brings the reality of the tragedy home to the reader. We all know the story, we've all studied the battle, now is our chance to experince it as it might have been. It's to bad this is not ' must reading' in high school history classes.

Rating:
Summary: A superb and admirable recreation of history
Review: Superb! Foolishly, I neglected to read this fine book when it was first published--assuming no one could have anything fresh to say about Custer and his mythologized battle. But genius always surprises us--and there is a spark of genius in Colonel Chiaventone's ability to communicate the feel of combat--its complexity, speed, randomness and sheer brutality. As a fellow writer, I can only envy the job this author has done. His research, including that on the "other side" was remarkable--yet his use of detail is always effective and never degenerates into laundry-listing. His sense of psychology and character is consistently sound, and his prose is sturdy and appropriate. As a former cavalry officer himself, Chiaventone understands the dynamics of men at war--in fact, he even understands the dynamics of horses, as anyone who has ever ridden seriously will recognize. This book has received deserved critical acclaim--but it also deserves a much wider audience than has discovered it to date. "A Road we do not Know" bears comparison with the few truly great American historical novels, such as "The History of Rome Hanks" and "The Killer Angels." We, as readers, may only hope that this author's future publishers will vigorously promote his future novels and bring them to a broad audience that will, as I did, find them as remarkable as they are readable. As a former soldier myself, I admire this work. As a novelist, I envy it. As a reader, I want more. --Ralph Peters

Rating:
Summary: As if you where there.
Review: There are really two kinds of historical fiction:
a) those based on History and as much as posible try to recreate Real Life people and events.
b) those who use history as a background to develop a fictional plot or fictional event.
For me this book fits easyly on the first one. Utterly believable account, dialogues and sequence of events. (Hard to belive it's a first novel!) On the same level of "Gates of Fire" and "The Killer Angels".
There are also two kinds of books for me, the one's I read one time and the one's I enjoy reading more then once, this one I enjoy rereading.
A must have/read.

Rating:
Summary: As Close As You're Gonna Get
Review: With "A Road We Do Not Know" Mr. Chiaventone takes us, on both banks of the Little Big Horn River, as close to what really happened there June 25, 1876 as anybody will ever get. Chiaventone achieves this partly through extensive historical research and partly through empathy for the men involved in the events, all of whom, Indians and cavalrymen, emerge from this story as real people: There are no Noble Savages in this book nor is Custer represented as a fool. Chivaentone understands the "fog of war" and how it can blind otherwise valiant and experienced commanders: Eighty-nine years after the Little Big Horn the 7th Cavalary got itself into a similar debacle at a place called the Ia Drang Valley in Viet-Nam, and in 1965 they had air support and artillery. The only quibble I have about this excellent novel is the large number of footnotes throughout. They do not belong in a novel because they distract from the flow of the story. Someone at Simon & Schuster needs to be reminded of that: put 'em in the narrative, in the mouths of the characters, or in an "Historical Note" at the end of the book, but NOT at the bottom of the page.

Rating:
Summary: As Close As You're Gonna Get
Review: With "A Road We Do Not Know" Mr. Chiaventone takes us, on both banks of the Little Big Horn River, as close to what really happened there June 25, 1876 as anybody will ever get. Chiaventone achieves this partly through extensive historical research and partly through empathy for the men involved in the events, all of whom, Indians and cavalrymen, emerge from this story as real people: There are no Noble Savages in this book nor is Custer represented as a fool. Chivaentone understands the "fog of war" and how it can blind otherwise valiant and experienced commanders: Eighty-nine years after the Little Big Horn the 7th Cavalary got itself into a similar debacle at a place called the Ia Drang Valley in Viet-Nam, and in 1965 they had air support and artillery. The only quibble I have about this excellent novel is the large number of footnotes throughout. They do not belong in a novel because they distract from the flow of the story. Someone at Simon & Schuster needs to be reminded of that: put 'em in the narrative, in the mouths of the characters, or in an "Historical Note" at the end of the book, but NOT at the bottom of the page.

Rating:
Summary: The "Killer Angels" of Little Bighorn. A true classic!
Review: Without question, the most gripping and human treatment of the Little Bighorn ever crafted. Soldiers and Sioux alike are shown as human beings struggling to survive in a crisis not of their own making. These are not cardboard "hollywood" characters but real people. Although a novel it is far better than hundreds of the so-called history books that have been written on the subject. Once you pick it up you will not be able to put it down. The critics are right, this is destined to be a classic in American literature!