Captain Close by Charles King
Price: $2.35
ePublished by
May 2023
Originally published 1894
Fiction, Charles King collection
Author: Charles King
ePublished by
May 2023
Originally published 1894
Fiction, Charles King collection
Author: Charles King
No writer is better than Charles King at bringing the reader vividly and realistically into the life of a U. S. Army soldier during the late-19th-early-20th century. Because of his personal experience as an officer in the conflicts of that period, he not only gets the historical details correct, but also the settings, moods, and day-to-day life, including the personal, romantic, financial, and family life of the soldiers living on those far-flung military posts along the western frontier.
In Captain Close, instead of King’s usual fare of describing the Indian wars of the Wild West, we are taken into the Deep South immediately after the Civil War, when animosities were still blatant, feelings still bitter, wounds still fresh, and the emotional re-constitution of the republic little more than a pipe-dream. From the perspective of a new Army lieutenant fresh from cadethood at West Point and assigned to a small “occupation” force in southern Mississippi, we see what that minefield of resentments must have been like to traverse.
(Although, not to worry, there is still some brief Indian warfare thrown in to keep Charles King fans from experiencing withdrawal pangs.)
In Captain Close, instead of King’s usual fare of describing the Indian wars of the Wild West, we are taken into the Deep South immediately after the Civil War, when animosities were still blatant, feelings still bitter, wounds still fresh, and the emotional re-constitution of the republic little more than a pipe-dream. From the perspective of a new Army lieutenant fresh from cadethood at West Point and assigned to a small “occupation” force in southern Mississippi, we see what that minefield of resentments must have been like to traverse.
(Although, not to worry, there is still some brief Indian warfare thrown in to keep Charles King fans from experiencing withdrawal pangs.)