In Spite of Foes by Charles King
Price: $3.25
ePublished by
October 2022
Originally published 1901
Fiction, Charles King collection
Author: Charles King
ePublished by
October 2022
Originally published 1901
Fiction, Charles King collection
Author: Charles King
No writer is better than Charles King, here with his first offering of the 20th century, at bringing the reader more 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 Spite of Foes; or, Ten Years’ Trial is more autobiographical than most of his novels. Like the hero in the novel, his experience started with the Indian wars of the American West; like the hero, he witnessed the great railway strikes of the 1890s which the Army was controversially called upon to subdue; like the hero, he was sent to the Philippine-American War in charge of state militiamen and promoted to the rank of general.
There is a lot of American history to cover in this one fictionalized autobiography, which makes this novel a little longer than some of his others—slightly more than 69,000 words—but the reader is nevertheless, as usual, left wanting more when the reading is finished.
In Spite of Foes; or, Ten Years’ Trial is more autobiographical than most of his novels. Like the hero in the novel, his experience started with the Indian wars of the American West; like the hero, he witnessed the great railway strikes of the 1890s which the Army was controversially called upon to subdue; like the hero, he was sent to the Philippine-American War in charge of state militiamen and promoted to the rank of general.
There is a lot of American history to cover in this one fictionalized autobiography, which makes this novel a little longer than some of his others—slightly more than 69,000 words—but the reader is nevertheless, as usual, left wanting more when the reading is finished.