DARK DIGITAL SKY

The author sent me a copy of his novel to review:

Is it an interesting gumshoe novel? Yes, but a little repetitive because the reader is told countless times that the PI drives a 911 (Porsche) and doesn’t walk the sidewalks. Does he wear rocker band tee shirts? Oh absolutely, every other page or so. Does he watch four TV screens at the same time? Yes... movies, novels, re-run sports, and the news? Does he take meds? Oh yea, lithium, celexa, and seroquel. Is Chalk a carbon copy of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer?  A big no to that question. My favorite flatfoot (Hammer) kicks ass first, or punches the suspect in the stomach then ask questions later if the suspect is still alive. Look, I’m not saying this PI isn’t worth a second novel, but lets stop the humdrum repetitiveness. I don’t expect Chalk to act like he is a detective in the late 1940s or early 1950s, but get real...don’t be the first IT geek dick. But, the good news is that I think Carac Allison came up with an interesting story and plot. The prose is a little weak here and there, but not bad for a former IT and hacker guy (just guessing, sorry). His knowledge of computers and their accessories is incredible and adds credence to the story. We need a new author to challenge the ghosts of Arthur Conan Doyle (The Hound of the Baskervilles ), Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep), or Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon). So lets get real Mr. Allison, and toughen this guy up! Chalk (our protagonist) needs to be whipped into street shape. Lets get out of that 911 and hit the bricks (I still love my idioms)!

This novel is actually two books in one. Wow, what a deal. The first part of the novel reveals to the reader that a Hollywood mogul (Mr. Robertson, a.k.a. the Hollywood Hyena) hires our protagonist Chalk (yes, like a chalkboard) to find out if he fathered any children when he was a sperm bank donor. By hacking the records of California Cryo Future, Chalk finds out that the Hyena had three sons. They are: Harlan, a wrestler known as the minister of pain; Jason, a biker and dog fight promoter trying to join the mongols; and Alexander, a primo internet hacker who is also a fervent gambler. Chalk sets up a meet with the three boys and the Hyena at a luxury hotel. The Hyena tells the boys that he is their father and showers them with money and a mansion. The boys connect with each other, knowing that they will try to suck every penny out of their rich father (by the way, is he terminally ill?). Meanwhile we hear on the news that forty million dollars of pills were stolen from Abbott Labs and sent directly to U.S. vets from someone known as GR. Initially the vets return the drugs. Then after more massive military type robberies occur, they keep the drugs and become sympathetic to the rebel military group. Why is this group leaving messages in red soap at the pharmaceutical robberies stating, ”Graphics have made warriors terrorists” or “War is the original and only game”? Who is GR? Chalk finds out that he is General Ripper (named after the General, played by Sterling Hayden, who orders an attack on Russia in the movie, Dr. Strangelove. When the Hyena receives word that the three boys are not his, he does something that I didn't see coming. End of the first part.

So you actually think that I was going to give the story away. This novel has just started and all I did was wet your whistle (another idiom) for the second part. Ha, Ha. This is the juicy part of the novel as we find the boys attempting to join General Ripper’s 2nd army. As an initiation, the boys must steal a famous Samurai sword (the Honjo Masamune) from the Chinese Mafia boss, Jian Chin. Do they succeed? What is General Ripper planning to do? Meanwhile, Chalk tries to tell the FBI (Chalk is a disgraced former FBI agent) what he knows about General Ripper’s plans, and they don’t believe him. This is a storyline that is mechanical in many novels - you know the routine...the dishonored former agent finds out the truth, but nobody believes him except one officer; in this case, it’s officer Rose. I think that Carac Allison has a lot of talent (as a hacker? just kidding), but I would advise the author to give Chalk a less geekish profile. What is wrong with a Mike Hammer type punch in the stomach that makes the suspect vomit once in awhile? (see my review of I, the Jury on 9/18/2013). What can Chalk do to improve his manliness (in other words act less like a techie)? How about: stop wearing rocker tee shirts! So Mr. Allison... give Chalk (I love his name) a less nerdy identity! That said, I think the novel’s plot was strong (two plots for one novel), but I didn’t fully connect with Chalk. Also there was too much computer technology in the novel for my taste. Okay, do I recommend this novel? Yes I do. It’s a good effort that could use some fine tuning, which I believe Mr. Allison will provide in his ensuing novels. 

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: Reading this novel got me to wonder about other novels that feature high-technology in a mind blowing way. This is not my favorite type of novel, but I’ll list some that seem to be techie favorites:

Daemon (2006) by Daniel Suarez. goodreads.com says, “Technology controls almost everything in our modern-day world, from remote entry on our cars to access to our homes, from the flight controls of our airplanes to the movements of the entire world economy. Thousands of autonomous computer programs, or daemons, make our networked world possible, running constantly in the background of our lives, trafficking e-mail, transferring money, and monitoring power grids. For the most part, daemons are benign, but the same can't always be said for the people who design them.

Matthew Sobol was a legendary computer game designer—the architect behind half-a-dozen popular online games. His premature death depressed both gamers and his company's stock price. But Sobol's fans aren't the only ones to note his passing. When his obituary is posted online, a previously dormant daemon activates, initiating a chain of events intended to unravel the fabric of our hyper-efficient, interconnected world. With Sobol's secrets buried along with him, and as new layers of his daemon are unleashed at every turn, it's up to an unlikely alliance to decipher his intricate plans and wrest the world from the grasp of a nameless, faceless enemy—or learn to live in a society in which we are no longer in control. . . .

Computer technology expert Daniel Suarez blends haunting high-tech realism with gripping suspense in an authentic, complex thriller in the tradition of Michael Crichton, Neal Stephenson, and William Gibson.”

Cryptonomicon (1999) by Neal Stephenson. goodreads.com says, “Cryptonomicon zooms all over the world, careening conspiratorially back and forth between two time periods--World War II and the present. Our 1940s heroes are the brilliant mathematician Lawrence Waterhouse, crypt analyst extraordinaire, and gung-ho, morphine-addicted marine Bobby Shaftoe. They're part of Detachment 2702, an Allied group trying to break Axis communication codes while simultaneously preventing the enemy from figuring out that their codes have been broken. Their job boils down to layer upon layer of deception. Dr. Alan Turing is also a member of 2702, and he explains the unit's strange workings to Waterhouse. "When we want to sink a convoy, we send out an observation plane first... Of course, to observe is not its real duty--we already know exactly where the convoy is. Its real duty is to be observed... Then, when we come round and sink them, the Germans will not find it suspicious."

All of this secrecy resonates in the present-day storyline, in which the grandchildren of the WWII heroes--inimitable programming geek Randy Waterhouse and the lovely and powerful Amy Shaftoe--team up to help create an offshore data haven in Southeast Asia and maybe uncover some gold once destined for Nazi coffers. To top off the paranoiac tone of the book, the mysterious Enoch Root, key member of Detachment 2702 and the Societas Eruditorum, pops up with an unbreakable encryption scheme left over from WWII to befuddle the 1990s protagonists with conspiratorial ties.” 

This next novel is one of my favorite ‘technology goes bad’ novels. The title of the novel tells it all: Utopia: A Thriller (2002) by Lincoln Child. goodreads.com says, “Fasten your seat belts-the white-knuckle thrills at Utopia, the world's most fantastic theme park, escalate to nightmare proportions in this intricately imagined techno-thriller by New York Times bestselling author Lincoln Child.

Rising out of the stony canyons of Nevada, Utopia is a world on the cutting edge of technology. A theme park attracting 65,000 visitors each day, its dazzling array of robots and futuristic holograms make it a worldwide sensation. But ominous mishaps are beginning to disrupt the once flawless technology. A friendly robot goes haywire, causing panic, and a popular roller coaster malfunctions, nearly killing a teenaged rider. Dr. Andrew Warne, the brilliant computer engineer who designed much of the park's robotics, is summoned from the East Coast to get things back on track.

On the day Warne arrives, however, Utopia is caught in the grip of something far more sinister. A group of ruthless criminals has infiltrated the park's computerized infrastructure, giving them complete access to all of Utopia's attractions and systems. Their communication begins with a simple and dire warning: If their demands are met, none of the 65,000 people in the park that day will ever know they were there; if not, chaos will descend, and every man, woman, and child will become a target. As one of the brains behind Utopia, Warne finds himself thrust into a role he never imagined-trying to save the lives of thousands of innocent people. And as the minutes tick away, Warne's struggle to outsmart his opponents grows ever more urgent, for his only daughter is among the unsuspecting crowds in the park. Lincoln Child evokes the technological wonders of Utopia with such skill and precision it is hard to believe the park exists only in the pages of this extraordinary book. Like Jurassic Park, Utopia sweeps readers into a make-believe world of riveting suspense, technology, and adventure. UTOPIA -- Where technology dazzles-and then turns deadly!”

Picture of my favorite PI:

At the Mountains Of Madness

Holy smoke, we have the good, the tedious, and the ugly in H.P Lovecraft’s classic novella, At the Mountains of Madness. H. P. Lovecraft published this story in 1936, one year before his death. The good is that this story is very contemporary and most likely would be a blockbuster movie in the hands of Steven Spielberg. Why not make it? Well, what about the tedious? I thought that the visual chroniclization (is it a real word, or did I just make it up?) of the city behind the mountain was a bit too much descriptive writing for me. For example when Professor Dyer describes the rooms in the city, he says, “The prime decorative feature was the almost universal system of mural sculpture, which tended to run in continuous horizontal bands three feet wide and arranged from floor to ceiling in alternation with bands of equal width given over to geometrical arabesques.” Or what about, “But the salient object of the place was the titanic stone ramp which, eluding the archways by a sharp turn outward into the open floor, wound spirally up the stupendous cylindrical wall like an inside counterpart of those once climbing outside the monstrous towers or ziggurats of antique Babylon.”

Besides page after page of descriptive writing about the city, Lovecraft can make your head spin with some of his other prose, such as, when commenting on what Dyer believed to be the extraterrestrial builders (The Elder Things/The Old Ones) of the city, the professor says, “They were the makers and enslavers of that life, and above all doubt the originals of the fiendish elder myths which things like the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Necronomicon affrightedly hint about.” What? That went way over my head. What about, “The decadent cartouches and dadoes telling this story were, as I have said, the latest we could find in our limited search.” Make sure you have a lexicon nearby. Okay, what about the ugly? Well the ugly is actually good. Lovecraft’s vision of the leathery barrel shaped winged alien life form with five head tentacles and pseudo feet is awesomely ugly. Lovecraft not only has a brilliant imagination, but also sketched his monstrosities. This was a very talented writer and like Edgar Allan Poe wasn’t recognized as a literary giant until well after his death. Okay, lets talk about this scary tale that was originally serialized into three issues of Astounding Stories in 1936.
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The narrator named Dyer (we know he is Professor William Dyer of Miskatonic University from a previous appearance in The Shadow out of Time) tells the frightening story of the school’s funded expedition to the Antarctic Continent. He says that he is telling this story in order to stop any future expeditions to the icy world. Thirty five men leave on two wooden ex-whaling ships from Boston Harbour on 9/2/1930. Here is a sound attribute that I credit to Lovecraft...only four main characters. They are Dyer (professor of geology), Danforth (grad student), Lake (professor of biology), and Pabodie (professor of engineering). It doesn’t get any better than that, just ask Cormac McCarthy (sorry, but I’m a big fan of fewest characters as possible and still have a award winning novel). Once they set up base on the glacier, they find fragments of slate with odd markings. Professor Lake decides to take a small party and head west for a side trip to check out the slate markings. He uses his original drilling apparatus to seek specimens of rocks and whatever only to break into a underground cave. They go down into the cave to investigate. Wow, “Later. Examining certain skeletal fragments of large land and marine saurians and primitive mammals, find singular local wounds or injuries to bony structure not attributable to any known predatory or carnivorous animal of any period.” 
 
Professor Lake finds fourteen barrel shaped monstrosities that are presumed dead (mentioned in the second paragraph of my review). They bring them back to their camp, and Lake attempts to dissect one of them. Why are the sled dogs angry and barking at the specimens? Lake radios his find to Dyer at the base camp. After a wind storm, Lake is never heard from again. Dyer decides to take one of their aeroplanes and fly to the site with grad student Danforth. They find eleven dead, eight monsters missing, six monsters buried, one man and dog missing. The human bodies (including Professor Lake) are mangled with “solid masses of tissues cut out.” Dyer and Danforth fly to a site towards the mountains where they find mountains well over 35,000 feet and a hidden city. As they begin to explore the city, Dyer writes, “...yet the prospect of actually entering primordial walls reared by conscious beings perhaps millions of years ago-before any known race of men could have existed-was none the less awesome and potentially terrible in its implications of cosmic abnormality.” This is where I stop and I haven’t even mentioned the Shoggoths, or the six foot blind albino penguins. If you haven’t read Lovecraft, what are you waiting for? I highly recommend this incredible tale.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: I often wonder what made writers like Lovecraft and Poe so great , yet so unrecognized. Wikipedia says the following about Lovecraft, “No wonder he died poor. Howard Phillips Lovecraft died painfully of intestinal cancer in Providence, Rhode Island on March 15, 1937. He was forty-six years old and almost totally broke. He spent his life eeking out an existence as an author in a genre that rewarded him with neither critical favor nor wealth and fame."

tvtropes.org said, “The best known author of the Cosmic Horror Story and the origin of the Cthulhu Mythos, Howard Phillips Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 — March 15, 1937) is considered perhaps the greatest of all horror fiction writers, rivaled only by his idol Edgar Allan Poe. An antiquarian eremite, he was more fond of books than of people, very much like most of his protagonists. There is, however, no official record of Lovecraft ever encountering anything corporeally eldritch, as much as some fans wish it were all true. To this day you can find at least a half dozen different fabrications of Lovecraft's wholly fictional Necronomicon.

He credited his night terrors while similar to nightmares, they are actually the result of a sleep disorder with providing most of his inspiration; both night terrors and the filmy, oily membrane between waking and sleep factor heavily in his various works."

biography.com says about Poe, “Born January 19, 1809, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. American short-story writer, poet, critic, and editor Edgar Allan Poe's tales of mystery and horror initiated the modern detective story, and the atmosphere in his tales of horror is unrivaled in American fiction. His The Raven (1845) numbers among the best-known poems in national literature.”

smithsonian.com says about Poe’s death, “Poe's death—shrouded in mystery—seems ripped directly from the pages of one of his own works. He had spent years crafting a careful image of a man inspired by adventure and fascinated with enigmas—a poet, a detective, an author, a world traveler who fought in the Greek War of Independence and was held prisoner in Russia. But though his death certificate listed the cause of death as phrenitis, or swelling of the brain, the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death have led many to speculate about the true cause of Poe's demise. "Maybe it’s fitting that since he invented the detective story," says Chris Semtner, curator of the Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, "he left us with a real-life mystery."

There is little doubt that these two writers are Hall-of-Famers!

The famous photo of H.P. Lovecraft:

The Arsenal Of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm An America at War

This is the first email review done unknowingly by past contributor, Deron O for the The Arsenal of Democracy by A.J. Baime:

I finished the Ford Motor Company book. I would give it 4 stars. I almost think it should be a 5, but...

It was a fast read, and the writing flowed. I kept wanting to read the next chapter. Believe it or not, it ended with two men with guns drawn staring each other down. The only thing it lacked was style, which is why the 4 stars. The writing was very plain. I’m not sure there was one word beyond a 5th grade level. That really didn't bother me and is probably why it read so fast. It just seemed like the author should have some kind of style for it to be 5 stars... maybe I'll give it 4.9 stars.

Of course, the book was incredibly interesting. I've never read a book about the wartime economy. This was an excellent book to start with. It mainly told the story of the beginning of the Ford company until WWII. It focused on the production of the B-24, but touched on all the major players in Detroit and all the things they built for the war. I guess the phrase "The Arsenal of Democracy" applies to the city of Detroit (the phrase also applies to America, and a few other things, but definitely also Detroit).

I forgot to mention, it is definitely non-fiction history that reads like a novel. More than not, each chapter ends on a cliffhanger.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

The Finished Product:

ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE

Is there a name for a short chapter book? I don’t think so, but it makes for elongated reading. By that I mean, it’s easy to say to yourself…”I’ll read one more chapter before retiring for the night”... again and again until you have read 50 to 100 pages. Get the picture? Then to make you read even more, the author alternates every short chapter (one to eight pages) between characters, time frame, or cliffhangers. Brilliant. If I’m reading a book with long chapters, I tend to look ahead to see how long the next chapter will be. If it’s too long, I say “sayonara” and retire for the evening. It doesn’t get any better than this, unless you are reading one of the greatest short chapter novels ever...Animal Farm (1945) by the dystopian writer George Orwell. We will talk about this “writer innovation” later in the comment section.

Anthony Doerr’s novel seems to tell several stories that collide in the waning chapters. We follow blind child Marie-Laure Leblanc and her father out of soon to be German occupied Paris during WWII to a walled French sea town named Saint-Malo in a house occupied by Marie-Laure’s strange great uncle Etienne. (Wow, that was a long sentence!) Anyway, Marie-Laure’s father, Daniel Leblanc, is the principal locksmith for the National Museum of Natural History and is carrying a famous diamond (maybe), the Sea of Flames, which is sought after by the Nazi Party. As the Nazis approach Paris, the museum director sends Daniel and three other people in four different directions, three of them with fake diamonds. Who has the real diamond? What happens to the diamond? Does the novel even answer that question?  

Alternatingly, we follow a German youth, Werner Pfennig, who has a propensity for fixing radios and is ultimately absorbed into the Hitler Youth Academy. The reader gets a good taste of how the Nazis trained and brainwashed the youths into a false bravado and hatred for non-Aryans. A good sidebar story is Werner’s relationship with his bunkmate, Frederick from Berlin. Neither boy believed in the Nazi Party but had to join the Youth Academy (ages 9 to 17) when they got the letter saying, ”You have been called, report to the National Political Institute of Education...” Werner eventually gets called into the war as a radio and transceiver repairman, working with a transceiver he partially invented. He is joined by the “giant” Frank Volkheimer from the Academy. Somehow, the meek Werner and the “giant” become sort of friends. In the ensuing chapters, Werner gets closer and closer to meeting Marie-Laure in the walled city. Will it be beneficial for both?

I thought the story of the terminally ill Nazi Sergeant Major Von Rumpel was pertinent to the story. As a gemologist prior to the military, he verified what this reader already knew from reading Robert M. Edsel’s non fiction book, The Monuments Men (2007) - that Hitler was gathering all of Europe’s treasures. And, Von Rumpel was in hot pursuit of the Sea of Flames. Will he also meet Werner and Marie-Laure in the walled city climax? Anthony Doerr has many more interesting characters in this pleasing novel, such as; Madame Manec, who runs great uncle Etienne’s six story house and the ladies resistance in Saint Malo, and Frau Elena, who runs the orphanage that Werner grew up in. This was a delightful novel with multiple stories that all come together at the book’s end. Great job of writing by Mr. Doerr.

Lastly, I thought that Doerr’s interchanging of the chapters between Werner, Marie-Laure, time periods, and other characters flowed brilliantly. Someone must have had a excellent continuity editor. And Mr. Doerr inadvertently whets the reader’s appetite for Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869) by constantly having Marie-Laure read chapter parts in braille and on great uncle Etienne’s attic radio. If I hadn’t already read it, I would probably be reading it as soon as I finished this review. Great job on this highly recommended novel.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: I really enjoyed reading this short chapter book, since it just flowed better. No tedious or uneventful moments, and if it did, they would only last up to eight pages. Try reading Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851). Yes, it’s a classic, but you better be well rested while reading it. Anyway, I’ll list five short chapter books that are classics:

Utopia (1516) by Thomas More. goodreads.com says, “First published in 1516, Thomas More's Utopia is one of the most important works of European humanism. Through the voice of the mysterious traveler Raphael Hythloday, More describes a pagan, communist city-state governed by reason. Addressing such issues as religious pluralism, women's rights, state-sponsored education, colonialism, and justified warfare, Utopia seems remarkably contemporary nearly five centuries after it was written, and it remains a foundational text in philosophy and political theory.”

The Little Prince (1940) by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. goodreads.com says, “Moral allegory and spiritual autobiography, The Little Prince is the most translated book in the French language. With a timeless charm it tells the story of a little boy who leaves the safety of his own tiny planet to travel the universe, learning the vagaries of adult behaviour through a series of extraordinary encounters. His personal odyssey culminates in a voyage to Earth and further adventures.”

Cat's Cradle (1963) by Kurt Vonnegut. goodreads.com says, “Told with deadpan humour & bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction preys on our deepest fears of witnessing Armageddon &, worse still, surviving it ...
Dr Felix Hoenikker, one of the founding 'fathers' of the atomic bomb, has left a deadly legacy to the world. For he's the inventor of 'ice-nine', a lethal chemical capable of freezing the entire planet. The search for its whereabouts leads to Hoenikker's three ecentric children, to a crazed dictator in the Caribbean, to madness. Felix Hoenikker's Death Wish comes true when his last, fatal gift to humankind brings about the end, that for all of us, is nigh…”

Holy Bible: King James Version (1611) by anonymous. goodreads.com says, “Great for all ages! All the majesty of the Authorized King James Version in a beautiful Black Leatherflex (Imitation Leather) Binding. The words of Christ are printed in red and names are written in a self-pronouncing way. This edition features an easy-to-use illustrated Bible dictionary and concordance, which adds to your understanding of the Scriptures. Full-color endpaper maps illuminate the Bible text. This edition is ideal for gift-giving since the front Presentation Page lets you record the occasion. The durable and practical black leatherflex binding will withstand regular use for years.”

A Clockwork Orange (1962) by Anthony Burgess. goodreads.com says, “A vicious fifteen-year-old "droog" is the central character of this 1963 classic, whose stark terror was captured in Stanley Kubrick's magnificent film of the same title.

In Anthony Burgess's nightmare vision of the future, where criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, who talks in a brutal invented slang that brilliantly renders his and his friends' social pathology. A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil, and the meaning of human freedom. When the state undertakes to reform Alex—to "redeem" him—the novel asks, "At what cost?"

Wow, those are heavy reading books, but made easier to read because of the short chapters.

Pigs from Animal Farm courtesy of www.wheatandtares.org:

CUSTER'S GOLD

The author sent me copy of his novel to review:

M. John Lubetkin writes a gripping novel in the style of Harry Turtledove, the guru of alternate history, writer of The Man with the Iron Heart. Lubetkin’s novel is also similar to Dan Simmons’s The Abominable: A Novel, a story (see my review of 1/8/2014), in which a old man (Jacob Perry) narrates the account of his adventures as a young mountain climber. In Custer’s Gold, the story is narrated by a old man (Ned Jordan) chronicling his adventures as a young surveyor. It seems many authors take a shot at writing alternate history, even Stephen King tried with his JFK novel, 11/22/63 (see my review of 5/16/2012). Now I’m not saying that Lubetkin is in the category of the above mentioned authors, but who knows...he just started writing after 32 years as a cable television executive. The story has some dead spots here and there but generally keeps the reader’s attention. Also interposed in Custer’s Gold are some chapters narrated by the bank robber Tom Donovan, aka Thomas Dugan, aka Mack McGillicuddy, to name a few. I enjoyed these "intermission" type breaks...more of these would have added needed profundity, not that the novel was simplistic. Okay, enough...what’s the novel about?

It’s August 1st 1864 in Virginia City, Montana. The Donovan gang bursts into the Allen and Millard Bank and get away with $15,000 and 200 pounds of gold dust. Meanwhile another part of the gang strike it rich by finding 650 pounds of gold dust on a Wells Fargo buckboard. Wow, what a haul! Later in the day they had 30 vigilantes after them. As the gang tries to escape on the Yellowstone River, they are attacked by Sitting Bull warriors. The gold is buried near the river, but many of the gang are killed. Donovan takes an arrow to his left eye and pulls it out. He is taken prisoner over the winter and released in the spring (he doesn’t know why they didn’t torture and kill him). The Indians warn him never to come back. He walks 600 miles to Wyoming with five pounds of gold dust in his gold belt. Now he must find a way to get the buried gold back while under the threat of death from the Sioux Indians. How many of the gang survived the Indian attack? Is Donovan the only survivor? I must say that this novel was toned down regarding the Sioux’s vicious torture customs. If you want to know what the Sioux really did, read Bob Drury’s The Heart of Everything That Is: The Untold Story of Red Cloud, An American Legend (see my review of 2/22/2014).

So, it’s 1935 and Ned Jordan is 89 years old and begins his story of the building of the second transcontinental railroad between Duluth, Minnesota and Tacoma, Washington (2,000 miles of track through hostile Sioux territory). The leader of the survey team is ex-Confederate General Tom Rosser. Somehow, Tom Donovan, now known as Mack, gets on the survey team with fellow gang member Red McCloud, aka Callahan. The president of the Northern Pacific, Gregory Smith, wants the young surveyor, Ned Jordan, to keep an eye out for the stolen gold. Smith thinks the stolen gold is on Northern Pacific land. Ned goes home to Portland, Maine to visit his parents before the dangerous survey trip starts. He falls in love with childhood friend Kate Warren, now a beautiful woman. Later, on the journey to survey the route to Tacoma, Ned and the General meet Bobby Pettit, a former Donovan gang member. Bobby tells them about the stolen gold and where it is. Subsequently, Bobby is found mutilated. Did the Sioux do this, or did someone who didn’t appreciate Bobby revealing where the gold is... kill him? Later Captain George Armstrong Custer (He was a Brevet Major General during the Civil War) provides military protection for survey team. After Ned, Rosser, Mack, Eck, Charlie and Phil (the group of six) find the gold, they keep it in two wagons. Custer puts two and two together and wants a cut of the gold. Ned’s group has no choice; they accept him as a partner. Now the fun starts: Can they get out of Indian territory alive? With the gold? Will one of the group steal all of the gold? The rest of the novel gets stimulating.

There were some good sidebar stories, such as, Ned’s infatuation with General Rosser’s wife, Lizzy. Kate Jordan’s secret relationship with her father, Judge Warren, was a big surprise. The sidebar story that I think Mr. Lubetkin messed up on was the one about President Grant’s son, Fred. A relative of President Grant’s family was killed on one of the survey trips. On page 236, Fred Grant goes on the next survey trip as an official observer. That’s the last we read about him. What? Did we forget about him? Did Mr. Lubetkin need a continuity editor? Other than some edit errors, it was an enjoyable novel, and I would highly recommend it.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: There have been quite a few books written about George Armstrong Custer, even though he finished last in his class at West Point and had all his men killed at The Battle of the Little Big Horn. What are some the better books? How about:

My Life On The Plains (1874) by General George A. Custer. Amazon.com says, “In 1874, just two years before General George A. Custer's death at Little Big Horn, a collection of his magazine articles was published as "My Life on the Plains." Custer, General in the U.S. Army’s Seventh Cavalry, wrote personal accounts of his encounters with Native Americans during the western Indian warfare of 1867-1869.   The collection was a document of its time and an important primary source for anyone interested in U.S. military affairs and U.S./Native American relations. Custer’s references to Indians as “bloodthirsty savages” were tempered by his empathetic understanding of their reason for fighting: “If I were an Indian, I often think I would greatly prefer to cast my lot among those of my people who adhered to the free open plains, rather than submit to the confined limits of a reservation…”

Little Bighorn: A Novel by John Hough, Jr. Walmart says, "Hired as an aide for Colonel Custer's 1876 campaign against the Sioux and Cheyenne, Allen Winslow falls in love with a military surgeon's sister who watches with foreboding as her loved ones ride out with Custer's Seventh Cavalry.As a favor to the beautiful actress Mary Deschenes, Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer hires her eighteen-year-old son Allen Winslow as an aide for his 1876 campaign against the Sioux and Cheyenne. Traveling west against his will, Allen finds himself in the company of Addie Grace Lord, sixteen, sister of one of Custer's regimental surgeons. The two fall in love, and it is with foreboding that Addie Grace watches Allen and her brother George ride out with Custer's Seventh Cavalry. Weeks later in Montana, hundreds of miles to the west, the Seventh brings its quarry to bay beside the river called the Little Bighorn.Beautifully written and filled with unforgettable characters, "Little Bighorn" brings to life the American West and its heartbreaking history, brilliantly portraying the flawed and tormented Custer.”

Custer, Black Kettle, and the Fight on the Washita (1938) by Charles J. Brill. Barnes and Noble says, “Using Cheyenne and Arapaho accounts, Charles J. Brill tells the story of General George Armstrong Custer’s winter campaign on the southern plains in 1868-69, including his attack in Black Kettle’s village on the snowy backs of the Washita River. Brill’s searing account details the ruthlessness of the U.S. Army’s efforts to punish southern plains tribes for what they considered incessant raiding and depredation. Brill provides the Indian point of view as he follows Custer into a battle that remains controversial to the present day.

In a new foreword to this edition, Mark L. Gardner discusses the significance of Brill’s history-placing it in context with other Custer and Indian Wars studies-and its Value to scholars and general readers today. Gardner also provides an overview of the career of Oklahoma journalist Charles J. Brill, much of whose life has remained a mystery until now.”

Glorious War (2013) by Thom Hatch. Barnes and Noble says, "Glorious War, the thrilling and definitive biography of George Armstrong Custer's Civil War years, is nothing short of a heart-pounding cavalry charge through the battlefield heroics that thrust the gallant young officer into the national spotlight in the midst of the country's darkest hours. From West Point to the daring actions that propelled him to the rank of general at age twenty-three to his unlikely romance with Libbie Bacon, Custer's exploits are the stuff of legend.

Always leading his men from the front with a personal courage seldom seen before or since, he was a key part of nearly every major engagement in the east. Not only did Custer capture the first battle flag taken by the Union and receive the white flag of surrender at Appomattox, but his field generalship at Gettysburg against Confederate cavalry General Jeb Stuart had historic implications in changing the course of that pivotal battle.

For decades, historians have looked at Custer strictly through the lens of his death on the frontier, casting him as a failure. While some may say that the events that took place at the Little Bighorn are illustrative of America's bloody westward expansion, they have in the process unjustly eclipsed Custer's otherwise extraordinarily life and outstanding career and fall far short of encompassing his incredible service to his country. This biography of thundering cannons, pounding hooves, and stunning successes tells the true story of the origins of one of history's most dynamic and misunderstood figures. Award-winning historian Thom Hatch reexamines Custer's early career to rebalance the scales and show why Custer's epic fall could never have happened without the spectacular rise that made him an American legend.”

The Northern Pacific Railroad being built: