Under the Bishop of Arlington Nationally Accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools

Custer's Catholic Appeal
by Patrick H. Keats, Ph.D.

The Custer Legacy
by Bruce T. Clark
Four Winds Publishing
612 pp. $20.00

History buffs, mystery and western fans, and anyone looking for good old-fashioned adventure and heroics will all find reason to cheer Bruce T. Clark's new novel, The Custer Legacy. The book should also prove a delight to anyone searching for an affirmation of Christian values and human dignity. And if you have been combing the bookstores for a novel that is Catholic to the core, without being preachy or heavy-handed, this may be it.

Clark has based his epic story (just over 600 pages) on two longstanding legends: the first concerns the existence of an ancient Aztec wonder drug (a sort of ultimate homeopathic remedy); the second deals with an enormous gold shipment supposedly lost after Custer's defeat at the Little Bighorn. After reading this novel, treasure-hunters may well descend upon the Little Bighorn Battlefield equipped with picks and metal detectors.

The Custer Legacy is neatly divided into three sections. The first and shortest, set in the 1520's Mexico of Cortez and Montezuma, serves as a sort of prologue to the rest. Father Garza, one of Cortez's chaplains, is the major character in this part of the book. The good and gentle priest finds himself in possession of two extraordinary gifts: a magnificent Toledo sword, movingly presented to him by his warrior grandfather as he leaves Spain for the New World; and an amazing wonder drug, given to him by an Aztec priest in gratitude for Garza's saving the life of his son.

Clark ingeniously uses these two props  the sword and the drug  to unify the rest of the novel. Clark's historical gifts (he is the in-house History scholar for Seton Home Study School in Front Royal, Virginia) are most evident in the second and longest section of the novel, set in the American West of the 1860's and 1870's. The major fictional characters here are Kevin McCarthy, a devout Irish-Catholic and former Union Army officer; and Clayton Forrester, a former Confederate Cavalry officer under Jeb Stuart, now a frontier scout who is captured by the Sioux and adopted by their great military leader, Crazy Horse.

But Bruce Clark, the Who's Who Historian, really demonstrates his historical knowledge when he describes, with great detail and authenticity, the Indian Wars of the 1870s. Without letting the action bog down, Clark includes the sort of careful touches that history-lovers will savor: the weapons used by both sides; the geography of the Northern Plains; the Indian initiation rituals, including a vivid account of the "Sun Dance." There's even a short lecture, by a Maverick-type riverboat gambler, on the fine art of playing poker.

More important, the colorful figures on both sides of the conflict are all here: Crazy Horse, the Indians' cavalry genius; Sitting Bull, the Sioux visionary; Phil Sheridan, sent by President Grant to lead the "White Eyes" against the Indians of the Great Plains; and, of course, George Armstrong Custer, the famed "boy general" of the Civil War, now the U.S. Cavalry's most flamboyant Indian fighter.

Custer has become a sort of cottage industry for historians, demonized by some, deified by others. Many of us still picture Custer as Errol Flynn making his heroic stand in the exciting but hilariously inaccurate 1942 film, They Died With Their Boots On. Clark, while giving Custer his due as a courageous leader, is decidedly not a fan; but he is also fair. Thus Custer's virtues, as well as his shortcomings, are carefully laid out in the novel.

The mystery lovers will probably be most engaged by the final 200-plus pages of the book, in which the three legendary artifacts  sword, wonder drug, and gold  are excitingly tracked down by a Texan/historian named Antonio Garza.

Antonio, enlisted by a saintly and scholarly Cardinal to locate the wonder drug, is a sort of Catholic Indiana Jones: ex-Green Beret (so is Bruce Clark, incidentally), historian, Vietnam veteran, and grieving widower ready to love again. And love he does   when Carla Cansino, a ravishing geologist from Houston, signs on to help him. Antonio and Carla make a dynamic team, fighting off the murderous agents of two deadly organizations, both bent on terminating their search.

Clark's publisher at Four Winds Publishing likes to refer to The Custer Legacy as "A Catholic Mystery/History." That is an apt description for a novel that is exciting, well-written, inspirational, and historically accurate. Kitty Deernose, a curator at the Little Bighorn Battlefield Museum, has commented that every Indian in America should read The Custer Legacy. Perhaps the same could be said for every Catholic.

Dr. Patrick H. Keats is Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature at Christendom College.