Review of: A WOUNDED THING MUST HIDE: IN SEARCH OF LIBBIE CUSTER

By Jeremy Poolman

 Sometimes it is intriguing how a book comes to one…almost like it has a mind and will of its own and has decided that, “You will read me and hear what I have to say.” I read ATLAS SHRUGGED as a young woman. It is a thick book and I remember reading it in the summer heat on vacation with my parents in eastern Washington. We were visiting my cousins and I could barely be sociable, I was so compelled by the story and its philosophy.

I remember discussing the book with my Uncle Glenn, who was in his forties and at that time Western editor of the Farm Journal. As I recall, Ayn Rand’s philosophy made brilliant sense to me, but Uncle Glenn was arguing against its merits.

 Flash forward more than a few years; I pick up a biography on Ayn Rand (a small, thin book) and am riveted for two days. Things I didn’t know when I first read AS suddenly come into focus as tremendously important: like, she was born in Russia and aspired to be a writer in America from age nine. She became an American citizen, changed her name, and was a copious writer of non-fiction, novels and screenplays. She was even happily married to an actor she met in Hollywood. I was so swept away by the facts of her life that I went in search of the little biography to add to my library, as well as another copy of ATLAS SHRUGGED to reread.

Being a bookaholic I keep costs down by rummaging the bargain tables at bookstores. It was at a Barnes & Noble that failing to find the Ayn Rand books, I picked up  A WOUNDED THING MUST HIDE: IN SEARCH OF LIBBIE CUSTER by Jeremy Poolman. Choices more often than not are about connections and an abiding belief that opportunity rarely knocks twice. I had been to the Little Bighorn memorial of Custer’s Last Stand in southwestern Montana a couple years prior. The most memorable part of that memorial being the discovery of George and Libbie’s great love story. 

There was a good -sized section of the museum with the Custer’s memorabilia, which showed quite another side of George Custer; he was as much a lover as an Indian fighter!  I filed this intrigue in my memory bank to be opened at a later date. That date arrived when I picked up Jeremy Poolman’s book and read it night and day (3 days) every spare moment to its conclusion.

The story ends with Poolman consolidating his notes and preparing to write the book you will enjoy, with the comment that he has time to write since Sarah was away.

It is fascinating how the story deftly jumps from past to present with little more than italics and paragraph breaks to separate centuries. All in all, I believe you will find it as compelling as I did.

Libbie Custer lived an extraordinary life with George Custer, which she wrote about in three autobiographies that funded her travels around the globe for fifty-seven years after his death at the Little Bighorn. She wore black every day of her life until she died in a New York City apartment in 1933, The remainder of her life was dedicated to cleaning up her late husband’s reputation. She met many heads of state; Japan, Africa, European  countries among them. She never stopped adoring her golden boy “Autie.”

  

This book is a writer’s journey to overcome the death of his own wife, Karen. It starts with a seed planted while visiting one of his mother’s elderly friends, who happened to live in the very same apartment in New York City where Elizabeth Bacon Custer lived out her last days and took her last breath.

Poolman begins his physical journey (in search of Libbie Custer) in Monroe, Michigan where she was born and raised. Spanning the centuries and continents,  Pool’s odyssey takes him as far as Japan and the Hermitage in Russia, where Libbie had visited in 1891, meeting with Tsar Alexander the second and while she was there, presented him with a ping pong ball size bear head cut from a solid gold nugget. Through Poolman’s persistence and inquiries, an archivist at the state museum discovered it among the treasures, covered with over 100 years of dust!

The story pleasantly meanders in Libbie Custer’s footsteps until the writer ends up at a Custer reenactment on a college campus, visiting as per agreement the love interest of his college professor friend, who has bailed out of an impending marriage after losing his bid for tenure and departed for parts unknown.

In the course of comforting Sarah (his friend’s fiancée) and her loss of Charlie (his friend) they grow close and fall in love.

I still haven’t replaced ATLAS SHRUGGED…..

Update: I later replaced Atlas Shrugged and was disappointed after all these years...                                                                     Raintreepoet, reporting.