Women -- West (U.S.) -- Fiction. |
Frontier and pioneer life -- Fiction. |
Biographical fiction. |
Historical fiction. |
Custer, Elizabeth Bacon, 1842-1933 -- Fiction. |
Bacon, Elizabeth, 1842-1933 |
Custer, Elizabeth B. (Elizabeth Bacon), 1842-1933 |
Custer, George Armstrong, Mrs., 1842-1933 |
Custer, Libbie, 1842-1933 |
Custer, Libby, 1842-1933 |
Human females |
Wimmin |
Woman |
Womon |
Womyn |
Border life |
Frontier and pioneer life -- History |
Homesteading |
Pioneer life |
Available:
Library | Shelf Number | Shelf Location | Status |
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Searching... Foxboro - Boyden Library | FIC SOLI | FICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Mansfield Public Library | FIC SOLI | FICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... New Bedford Francis J. Lawler Branch | FIC SOLI | FICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Rehoboth - Blanding Free PL | FIC SOLI, T. | FICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Seekonk Public Library | FIC SOLI | FICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Taunton Public Library | SOLI, TATJANA | 1ST FLOOR STACKS | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
As the first wave of pioneers travel westward to settle the American frontier, two women discover their inner strength when their lives are irrevocably changed by the hardship of the wild west in The Removes , a historical novel from New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Tatjana Soli.
Spanning the years of the first great settlement of the West, The Removes tells the intertwining stories of fifteen-year-old Anne Cummins, frontierswoman Libbie Custer, and Libbie's husband, the Civil War hero George Armstrong Custer. When Anne survives a surprise attack on her family's homestead, she is thrust into a difficult life she never anticipated--living among the Cheyenne as both a captive and, eventually, a member of the tribe. Libbie, too, is thrown into a brutal, unexpected life when she marries Custer. They move to the territories with the U.S.Army, where Libbie is challenged daily and her worldview expanded: the pampered daughter of a small-town judge, she transforms into a daring camp follower. But when what Anne and Libbie have come to know--self-reliance, freedom, danger--is suddenly altered through tragedy and loss, they realize how indelibly shaped they are by life on the treacherous, extraordinary American plains.
With taut, suspenseful writing, Tatjana Soli tells the exhilarating stories of Libbie and Anne, who have grown like weeds into women unwilling to be restrained by the strictures governing nineteenth-century society. The Removes is a powerful, transporting novel about the addictive intensity and freedom of the American frontier.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
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." (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
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. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
CRASHED: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World, by Adam Tooze. (Viking, $35.) The crash of 2008, Tooze argues, was caused in both Europe and America, and its impact, he says, has been more political than economic, leading to a continuing wave of nationalism, protectionism and populism throughout most of the West. HITS AND MISSES: Stories, by Simon Rich. (Little, Brown, $25.) This collection of 18 satirical stories - by an author who makes the difficult look so easy you could think of him as the Serena Williams of humor writing - pokes fun at the foibles of millennial culture. Rich is at the height of his craft when he is writing on the border between comedy and tragedy. THE MIDDLEMAN, by Oien Steinhauer. (Minotaur, $27.99.) In this thriller from the creator of "Berlin Station," a revolutionary anticapitalist movement seeks to unite the disaffected of America's red and blue states. FIGHT NO MORE, by Lydia Millet. (Norton, $24.95.) In this shimmering and brilliantly engaged collection - united by a recurring character, a jaded young California real estate agent - Millet explores the complicated definition of home, a place which represents solace and love for some but sorrow and pain for others. A TERRIBLE COUNTRY, by Keith Gessen. (Viking. $26.) The young Russian-American protagonist of Gessen's novel returns to his native Moscow and discovers both misery and magic. Gessen evokes something exceedingly rare in American fiction: genuine male vulnerability. FAMOUS FATHER GIRL: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein, by Jamie Bernstein. (HarperCollins, $28.99.) What was it really like having the charismatic, larger-than-life conductor/composer Leonard Bernstein as a father? It wasn't easy, as this warm but unsparing memoir from his elder daughter reveals; Bernstein could be remote or uncomfortably close, with no boundaries. EMPRESS: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan, by Ruby Lai. (Norton, $27.95.) The daughter of Persian immigrants, Nur Jahan became the favorite wife and co-ruler of Jahangir, lord of the Mughal Empire, a patriarchy that dominated much of what is now India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. NO ASHES IN THE FIRE: Coming of Age Black and Free in America, by Darnell L. Moore. (Nation Books, $26.) This searing memoir, by the son of teenage parents in Camden, N. J., tells the story of a childhood in the cross hairs of racism and homophobia. THE REMOVES, by Tatjana Soli. (Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.) A historical novel that intertwines the story of George Armstrong Custer with those of his wife, Libbie, and Anne Cummins, a teenage settler captured by the Cheyenne. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Library Journal Review
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 Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.