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(More customer reviews)Miles Hood Swarthout comes by his western sensibilities honestly: His father, Glendon Swarthout -- author of "The Shootist" and "Bless the Beasts and the Children" -- was in the vanguard of the "new" western literary novelists who blended history, landscape and character in a fresh way.
Miles' new novel, "The Sergeant's Lady," is literally in that tradition, based upon one of his father's stories. It has all the hallmarks of a good, traditional western adventure, and the literary flourish of contemporary western writers. His beautiful writing and fast-paced action-adventure take us back to those golden days of yore, when good stories had both.
For fans of the Old West, the Indian Wars, or just good fiction, this is a marvelous addition to your bookshelf.
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The Sergeant's Lady won a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America as the Best First Novel of 2004 and received some terrific reviews. It was chosen one of the best new books about the Southwest by the Friends of the Pima County (Tucson) Libraries in 2003. The Sergeant's Lady is a frontier love story between an aging Army Sergeant scout and a rancher's middle-aged divorcee sister, back-dropped by the very last bloody raid into Arizona Territory by Apache renegades under Chiricahua Chief Naiche's (Cochise's second son) leadership at the tail-end of the twenty-six year-long war with these fierce Apaches in the spring of 1886. General Nelson Miles had just taken over command from disgraced General George Crook, who had lost Geronimo and some of his recalcitrant warriors and families after they'd first surrendered and started back under escort to Fort Bowie in northern Arizona, then changed their minds after an all-night drunk and fled back across the border toward their sanctuary in Mexico's vast Sierra Madre Mountains, soon to return to terrorize America's borders again.To secure his military communications after warriors kept cutting his telegraph wires, Brigadier General Miles organized heliographs, a newly tested network of sun-flashing devices utilizing Morse code. In a couple months heliographs were set up on 33 mountaintops across the huge southwestern territory to watch out for these roving Apaches from on high, and to facilitate the movement of Army patrols and supplies between the forts as the massive manhunt, involving one quarter of the entire United State Army at that time, went on for these last few Indian renegades.This is the story of four soldiers and their leader, Sergeant Ammon Swing, off patrol while healing a leg wound, running one of these heliograph/observation posts. The men strike up a friendship with two homesteaders living on a cattle ranch below their mountain, where this detail goes down to pick up water and supplies. Interestingly, the Lady happens to be the best fighter, better with her rifle than these soldiers, and it is she who ends up saving her boyfriend's bacon in the fierce climax, "the attack on the mountain" by my late father, Glendon Swarthout, upon whose short story this novel is based. Divorced, opinionated, a herbalist and a crack shot, Martha Cox is quite the match for her tough "lifer" Sergeant and all the men, both Indian and white, she comes into contact with in this harsh, violent Arizona Territory in the later 1800's. Reviews -- "A beautifully written novel filled with historical facts concerning both men in the Army and the Apaches. Each chapter begins with quotes by historical figures, some humorous, some factual, but all interesting. Interwoven with Swarthout's account of the final campaign against the Apaches under Geronimo, is the tender love that develops between Sergeant Ammon Swing and Miss Martha Cox, a woman on the sunny side of forty who is as well suited to Arizona Territory as the century plant. There is not a weak point in The Sergeant's Lady. The dialogue is authentic and occasionally amusing to our modern ears; the characters are complex and three-dimensional; and the sense of place is as strong as an unwashed Private in the U.S. Cavalry. This is a book worthy of comfortable chair, cold beer, chips and salsa." Doris Meredith, The Roundup, Western Writers of America's bi-monthly magazine. "The author's screenwriting experience (The Shootist) stands him in good stead. He paints excellent word pictures, and the story moves at a rapid pace through the short chapters. Character development is many cuts above most genre novels. Minor characters such as Sgt. Swing's men and the Apaches are all distinct individuals. Swarthout imparts much interesting information about Apache and cavalry life without force-feeding the reader. An outstanding Western, worthy of many re-reads." B.J. Sedlock, Historical Novels Review.
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