I really enjoy well-written non-fiction and historical fiction about the American West, and in Ridgeline, Michael Punke has created a tale based on real people and events that held me in its grasp from beginning to end.
Any well-told tale has to have a first-rate cast of characters, and there certainly is one here. The arrogant ignorance of so many in Carrington's band of soldiers makes you shake your head. Carrington himself had no battle experience, and as they journey to their destination in the Powder River Valley, he is reminded of the African safaris undertaken by British nobles. After all, officers' wives and other women are traveling with them as well as the band he insisted upon so they could have music in the evenings around the campfires. Oh, how very civilized.
Others also make contributions to Ridgeline. Frances Grummond, the wife of the most arrogantly ignorant of Carrington's officers, writes of her experiences in two different journals: one for public consumption and one private, for-her-eyes-only. Jim Bridger, hired as a scout, helps show just how ignorant the soldiers are, and I loved his reply to one of the officers in one of their many meetings: "Don't ask me if you don't wanna know." How many times have so-called intelligent people refused to listen to the experts they hired?
But it was watching Red Cloud and Crazy Horse that kept me focused the most. Watching them work with other Lakota and then other tribes, convincing warriors that they needed a new way to fight the soldiers in order to win, forming their strategy that was so brilliant that it would ultimately be taught in military academies around the world. Watching events unfold knowing it was ultimately for nothing.
Although I knew how Ridgeline was going to end, I still got caught up in Punke's story. I still got caught up with the characters. That's some powerful storytelling, and I look forward to his next book.
Any well-told tale has to have a first-rate cast of characters, and there certainly is one here. The arrogant ignorance of so many in Carrington's band of soldiers makes you shake your head. Carrington himself had no battle experience, and as they journey to their destination in the Powder River Valley, he is reminded of the African safaris undertaken by British nobles. After all, officers' wives and other women are traveling with them as well as the band he insisted upon so they could have music in the evenings around the campfires. Oh, how very civilized.
Others also make contributions to Ridgeline. Frances Grummond, the wife of the most arrogantly ignorant of Carrington's officers, writes of her experiences in two different journals: one for public consumption and one private, for-her-eyes-only. Jim Bridger, hired as a scout, helps show just how ignorant the soldiers are, and I loved his reply to one of the officers in one of their many meetings: "Don't ask me if you don't wanna know." How many times have so-called intelligent people refused to listen to the experts they hired?
But it was watching Red Cloud and Crazy Horse that kept me focused the most. Watching them work with other Lakota and then other tribes, convincing warriors that they needed a new way to fight the soldiers in order to win, forming their strategy that was so brilliant that it would ultimately be taught in military academies around the world. Watching events unfold knowing it was ultimately for nothing.
Although I knew how Ridgeline was going to end, I still got caught up in Punke's story. I still got caught up with the characters. That's some powerful storytelling, and I look forward to his next book.
