The Thirty-Ninth Man - Reviews

—BUY DIRECT-SPECIAL PRICING FOR THIS TWO-BOOK SET—

CONTINENTAL U.S.—$27–DELIVERED

HISTORY drives this set, which exposes the pain, flawed treaties, and decline of the Plains Indians.

The Thirty-Ninth Man — On August 19, 1825, in a place called Prairie du Chien, Michigan Territory, under the guise of concern but wrapped in a cloak of deceit, the federal government began a series of treaties with the Sioux Nation that would lead to the outbreak of the Sioux Wars, and the end of a way of life.

In 1862 with the beginnings of the Sioux Wars in the Minnesota River Valley, a mixed-blood named Anton McAllister balances on the razor-thin line separating corrupt Indian agents, unscrupulous fur traders, the U.S. Army, and powerful chiefs from the Chippewa and Dakota Nations. When his best friend is falsely accused of war crimes and sentenced to die, Anton finds himself in a race to save his friend from the gallows.

This story follows Anton from birth in the White Mountains of New Hampshire in 1805 to the largest mass execution in US History in 1882.

Tears Of Sorrow — Anton McAllister leads survivors west to escape the white backlash of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. Settling into the Black Hills, they merge with the Miniconjou Lakota band of Lone Horn. Anton’s adopted son, Four Wings, befriends the militant warrior Crazy Horse, and their world is turned upside down as they deal with disingenuous treaties, an illegal war brought on by the Grant Administration, and a deranged bounty hunter no larger than a child.

Sitting Bull, Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, and powerful men from the Cheyenne and Arapaho Nations make their stand when the army begins to build forts along the Bozeman Trail. 

Red Cloud wins his war, the Bozeman Trail is closed, Custer is defeated, but the Black Hills are lost. Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull are murdered, and Wounded Knee Creek becomes the death wail of a free Sioux Nation.

And throughout it all, Four Wings struggles to reconcile the good white men he has known, including the mixed blood who raised him, with those who seek to subdue or destroy the Sioux Nation.