desertvixen | Reading Update #40

These were originally going to be in the last review, but I thought they deserved their own post.

I recommend both of these books, they were great!

Army Wives on the American Frontier by Anne Bruner Eales was an excellent read I would definitely recommend. She draws from journals and letters of Army wives on the Western Frontier, including several from the Seventh Cavalry. The book does not focus on any of them in particular, choosing to share amusing tidbits rather than whole stores, along with the small tragedies of frontier life. The overall theme is how the women changed to adapt to frontier life, and how some of them proved that women are not necessarily the weaker sex in terms of physical and mental endurance under incredible conditions. It also led me to some other reading, including this second book.

With Custer’s Cavalry by Katherine Gibson Fougera is an adaptation of the memoirs of Katherine Garrett Gibson, wife of then-Lieutenant Frank Gibson of the Seventh Cavalry. Gibson was sent to the West to visit her sister Mollie, married to Lieutenant Donald McIntosh, and ended up never going home. It is written in an engaging style, with Gibson poking fun at herself and her mistakes, but over the entire book hangs the specter of the upcoming Battle of Little Big Horn. So many of the gallant men in the book died there, and the stories are touching. She evokes the feeling of family that evolved in Army units, and that still do today – from falling in love with a military man on first sight to the hardships of frontier life to cutting apart her wedding dress to line a baby’s pine coffin. An interesting fact of her story was the premonition she had that made her husband decline a transfer back to the Seventh Cav’s HQ prior to Little Big Horn, that saved his life. I would definitely recommend this one. Katie Gibson could be a military wife of today, from the attitude that comes through the pages and brings her story to life. The end of the book, where she talks about how her husband wanted to be buried at Arlington with their brother-in-law (McIntosh) so that they would always be together, within hearing of the bugle calls they had lived by and loved. The four of them are buried there today.