The Color of Lightning, Jiles - B

                                              This is a solid historical novel set in Texas in the aftermath of the Civil War. The book is based on oral histories that were recorded early in the twentieth century. Britt Johnson was a free black man whose wife and two children were kidnapped by the Kiowa. The story switches back and forth between the harsh lives of the captives and Britt's pursuit to recover them. The frontier was no easy place. The author does a great job exposing the brutality of life for the nomadic Indians and their unfortunate captives. Captives who were taken young and retrieved were unable to re-adapt upon their return to civilization. Britt was famous for having recovered his family a few months after their capture. The second half of the book is about Britt's teamster business and the plight of Samuel Hammond, a Quaker in charge of the Ft. Sill Indian Bureau. As well as any history book, it tells the plight of the Indians and the incompetency of the US. The Indians needed freedom and it just was not available anymore. The conflict was, in my opinion, unavoidable, but is nonetheless always painful to read about.  Britt was killed in 1871, just as the US gave up on a temporary peace policy and sent William Tecumseh Sherman to Texas.