Strange Company

by Robert J. Conley

Book Overview

PB This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671694766
• ISBN13: 9780671694760
• Release Date: April 1991
• Publisher: Pocket Books
• Length: 163 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Thoroughly satisfying Western with a Civil War background.

The two main protagonists of this very enjoyable Western are Dhu Walker ,a mixed race and very reluctant soldier of the Confederacy, and Ben Franklin Lacey an Iowa farm boy turned Union soldier.Walker -who is part Cherokee and part white -is fighting because his tribal elders decree tyhat he must,and his being well educated and a considerable polyglot help ensure he does not fit easily into the military way.While attempting to escape duringt the battle of Pea Ridge he falls into the hands of the sadistic Confederate officer "Old Ham (Early )"Also taken at the same battle is Lacey and they are compelled to fight each other for the amusement of Early's troops.They are able to escape and ,initially mutually hostile ,they begin to form an almost reluctant friendship and conceive a plan to ally with others and ambush Early,who is returning from Mexico with a troop escorting gold bound for the Confederate treasury .They seek help from some Cherokee and from the family of some settlers ,The McClellans whom they helped when Southern sypathisers tried to forcibly enlist their son into the Confederate army.When the Cherokees fail to come through it is left to the pair and the McClellans to seek to remove the gold from Early who is in turn planning to double cross the Confederacy and appropriate the gold for personal use.Events build to a satisfying and plausible conclusion and there is even time for some romantic dalliance along the way.The book is not only well plotted and neatly written but has insights into native American involvement in the Civil War ,and works splendidly as a study in friendship and the growing mutual respect that springs up between Walker and Lacey is especially well described.Conley is a major Wesytern writer and his neglect outside the genre ghetto is shameful.Read it -I suspect you will enjoy it as well as I did.