BOOK REVIEW – Black Hills by Dan Simmons

Black Hills

By Dan Simmons

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: Reagan Arthur Books; 1 edition (February 24, 2010)
• ISBN-10: 031600698X
• ISBN-13: 978-0316006989
• Author’s website – www.dansimmons.com

Years ago I did the classics. Today my genre is mystery. My authors of choice include Kellerman, Kimmelman, Truman, Cornwall, Deaver, Kellerman (Jonathan), and Kellerman (Faye). So when I was asked to review Dan Simmons’s new release, Black Hills, I was skeptical. Would I get through its 487 pages much less enjoy it? Affirmative.

I was drawn into the book because of its location. I knew the region as I have traveled the Black Hills of North Dakota and had seen Mount Rushmore. I visited reservations so I saw first hand the appalling squalor and poverty of America’s true natives. I read the history texts detailing the white man taking land by massacring its red men.

Simmons’s work is historical fiction rich in research data and actual reach life detail. Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Custer, his widow, Wild Bill Hickok, sculptor Borglum, all are authentic.

The tale begins in 1876 with eleven year old Paha Sapa (meaning Black Hills) counting coup on a dying soldier in the Little Big Horn. When the man dies, his spirit stays with Paha Sapa until the end sixty years later. The Lakota Indian has a special gift. His visions carry him across time barriers from the Age of the Glaciers into the world of the future. His ability to connect with people like Custer, Rain, and Borglum gives the tale itself a fuller perspective.

The magic of his words transcends the supernatural and its ghosts. It tells another side of the genocidal Indian Wars and U. S. expansionism. As a hard-working survivor of a ruthless, relentless invasion, Paha gives the Sioux story more perspective.

The hardcover Black Hills released by Little, Brown and Company on February 24, 2010.