Forced to serve as a Yankee after his capture at Pea Ridge, Confederate soldier Jonah Hook returns from the war to find his Missouri farm in shambles.From Publishers WeeklySet primarily on the high plains during the 1860s, this novel has the epic sweep of the frontier built into it. Unfortunately, Johnston (the Sons of the Plains trilogy) relies too much on a facile and overfamiliar style. Add to this the overly graphic descriptions of violence, and readers will recognize a genre that seems especially popular these days: the sensational western. The novel opens in the year 1908, with a newspaper reporter Nate Deidecker seeking out Jonah Hook, an aged scout, Indian fighter and buffalo hunter. Deidecker has been writing up firsthand accounts of the Old West and intends to add Hook's to his series. Hook readily agrees, and the narrative moves from its frame to its main canvas. Alas, Hook's story is also conveyed in the third person, thus depriving the reader of the storytelling aspect which, supposedly, Deidecker is privileged to hear. The plot concerns Hook's search for his family--abducted by a marauding band of Mormons--after he serves a tour of duty as a "galvanized" Union soldier (a captured Confederate who joined the Union Army to serve on the frontier). As we follow Hook's bloody adventures, however, the kidnapping becomes almost submerged and is only partially, and all too quickly, resolved in the end. Perhaps Johnston is planning a sequel; certainly the unsatisfying conclusion seems to point in that direction.
July 26, 1865
On the far hills, hundreds of warriors were leaping atop their ponies, kicking them furiously downhill toward the river. They had spotted the tops of the wagons not long after the fort had seen the incoming train, inching along the road on the Indians’ side of the North Platte.
“How many’s with Sergeant Custard?” Shad Sweete inquired.
“I remember him having ten soldiers and fourteen teamsters,” Hook answered.
“Say!” shouted a picket above them. “The Injuns just cut off five of our boys from the rest of the wagon.”
“How many warriors following those five?” Shad slung his voice up the wall.
“More’n a hundred, mister.”
Hook felt helpless, knowing some of those men out there by face, if not by name. Knowing they had families back home, waiting for a husband or father or brother to come marching home. “Ain’t nothing we can do to help ’em?”
“Ain’t a damned thing now, Jonah,” Shad whispered. “Not a damned thing.”
BOOKS BY TERRY C. JOHNSTON
SONS OF THE PLAINS NOVELS
THE PLAINSMEN NOVELS
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Jonah Hook
Gritta (Moser) Hook
Hattie Hook
Jeremiah Hook
Ezekiel Hook
Shadrach Sweete Toote Sweete/Shell Woman
Pipe Woman—daughter
High-Backed Bull—son
Colonel Jubilee Usher
Major Lemuel “Boothog” Wiser
Captain Eloy Hastings
Riley Fordham
Laughing Jack
Healy Stamps
Sam Palmer
General William Tecumseh Sherman—Commander, Military Division of the Missouri
Lieutenant-General Philip H. Sheridan—Commander, Military Dept. of the Platte
Lieutenant Caspar Collins
General Patrick E. Connor—Commander, Military Dept. of the Plains
Captain Henry Leefeldt—Co. K (Camp Marshall)
Captain A. Smith Lybe
Sergeant Amos Custard—11th Kansas Cavalry
First Sergeant William R. Moody—Co. I
Major Martin Anderson—Platte Bridge Station, post commander
Captain Henry Bretney—11th Ohio Cavalry
Lieutenant George Walker—Platte Station Adjutant
Corporal James Shrader—11th Kansas Cavalry
Captain Henry E. Palmer—Powder River Exped. Quartermaster
Colonel Henry E. Maynadier—Commander, Fort Laramie
Dr. Henry R. Porter—surgeon, 7th U. S. Cavalry, Ft. Hays
Captain Frederick W. Benteen—7th U. S. Cavalry
Major Wycliffe Cooper—7th U. S. Cavalry
Captain George W. Yates—7th U. S. Cavalry
Lieutenant Myles W. Moylan—7th U. S. Cavalry
Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer—7th U. S. Cavalry
Lieutenant Thomas Ward Custer—7th U. S. Cavalry
Major Joel H. Elliott—7th U. S. Cavalry
Captain Louis M. Hamilton—7th U. S. Cavalry
Lieutenant Lyman S. Kidder—2nd U. S. Cavalry
Lieutenant Edward Godfrey—7th U. S. Cavalry
Lieutenant/Captain James Murie (Co. B) Sgt. Bear Runs Him
Roman Nose—Cheyenne war chief Grass Singing—Pawnee
George Bent—half-breed Cheyenne son of fur trader Bent Black Kettle—Cheyenne
Blind Wolf—Cheyenne chief (father to High-Back Wolf) Pawnee Killer—Brule Spotted Wolf—Cheyenne Young Man Afraid—Oglalla He Dog—Oglalla High-Back Wolf—Cheyenne Turkey Leg—Cheyenne chief
Jim Bridger
Captain E. W. Nash—Omaha and Winnebago scouts (Powder River)
California Joe (Moses) Milner—Hancock Expedition
Jack Corbin—Hancock Expedition
James Butler Hickok—Hancock Expedition
Will Comstock—Platte River Expedition
Nathan (Nate) Deidecker—newsman, Omaha
Artus Moser
Samuel Hosking
Eldon Boatwright
Major Edward W. Wynkoop—government agent to the Cheyenne
Colonel Jesse W. Leavenworth—government agent to the Sioux
Sidney Gould—mercantile sutler, Fort Larned
