Boots and Saddles

Boots and Saddles is Elizabeth Bacon Custer's vivid memoir of army life on the northern Plains, especially in Dakota, during the years preceding the Little Bighorn. Blending domestic anecdote, travel writing, military chronicle, and romantic portraiture, it renders frontier campaigning through the eyes of a devoted officer's wife. Its polished, sentimental style belongs to nineteenth-century memoir, yet its details of garrisons, marches, danger, and sociability make it an important document of post-Civil War American expansion. Elizabeth Bacon Custer, widely known as Libbie, was the educated daughter of a Michigan judge and married George Armstrong Custer in 1864. She accompanied him through much of his military career, observing both the public spectacle and private hardships of army life. After his death in 1876, she became the principal guardian of his reputation; this book reflects her grief, loyalty, and deliberate effort to shape his historical image. This volume is recommended to readers interested in frontier literature, women's life-writing, military culture, and the making of American legend. Read critically, it offers both an intimate narrative and a revealing artifact of memory, devotion, and national myth.

Pagina's: 144, Paperback, Sharp Ink