Black Hills: A Novel

In June of 1876, a gifted young Lakota Indian boy named Paha Sapa touches a dying white soldier at the Battle of Little Big Horn, little realizing that he is "counting coup" on the fallen General Custer himself. In that moment, the boy's life changes forever, as the ghost of the slain war leader mysteriously enters his soul, where it will reside, speaking to him at odd moments, for the next sixty-plus years.

Black Hills comes from the vivid imagination of Dan Simmons, author of previous lengthy best-selling historical novels The Terror and Drood. The book is long, entertaining, and wonderfully descriptive, though it lapses into excessive wordiness at times. The epic story encompasses seven decades of Paha Sapa's life and treats the reader to diverse settings ranging from the Black Hills of South Dakota to the "White City" of the Chicago World's Fair. Told in a nonlinear fashion, much of it in present tense, the story can be difficult to follow, particularly toward the beginning of the book before the reader is accustomed to the back-and-forth, decade-skipping flow of the narrative.

The main plot centers around the construction of the Mount Rushmore memorial, carved into a mountain sacred to the Lakota tribe. Paha Sapa signs on as a powderman on the blasting crew, hoping to fulfill a destiny revealed to him as a child in a vision: to stop the wasicus--the white "fat takers"--from destroying the Black Hills. Other story lines include Paha Sapa's wonderful coming of age as a Lakota visionary, a too-brief romantic interlude in Chicago, and the underlying saga of America's growing-up years through the early twentieth century.

The book's key strength, aside from Simmons's often beautiful descriptions of vivid settings, is its imaginative retellings of actual events, most notably the construction of Mount Rushmore. Simmons tips his hat to other key historical events as well, including the building of the Brooklyn Bridge in a well-researched and fascinating chapter. Lakota culture, language, and spirituality is explored throughout.

The book contains a fair amount of language, though most of it fits the settings and characters. Less appropriate are a number of bizarrely and unnecessarily explicit accounts of marital intimacy from the point of view of Custer's ghost.

Unfortunately, like many long books, Black Hills fails to end when it should; the last fifty pages are a strange departure from the lyrical beauty of the rest of the book, as the author launches into a seemingly agenda-driven tirade against humanity's affects on nature.

Overall, however, the book is highly enjoyable and well worth the not inconsiderable time it takes to complete. Flawed yet replete with flashes of brilliance, the book will entertain, educate, and move readers as it delves into the always strained and occasionally beautiful relationship between a nation's past and its future.

Black Hills, by Dan Simmons, begins with Paha Sapa, a young Lakota boy, touching the body of the dying General George Custer at Little Big Horn. In that moment, Custer's spirit enters Paha Sapa's body. It doesn't leave for over sixty years.

Paha Sapa experiences this more than once with people. He has Custer's spirit in his head, but he also can see the pasts and futures of many people he meets, including Crazy Horse. During his initiation ceremony to become a man, Paha Sapa also experiences a terrible vision of the future; four large stone presidents of the United States careening across his beloved Black Hills, eating everything in their sight and leaving all behind them to waste. Paha Sapa grows up as his Lakota family and the other native tribes of the Great Plains die out. He comes to the decision that he must destroy these stone presidents before they destroy his land. So he sets out on a plan to blow up Mt. Rushmore before the monument is complete.

Paha Sapa is a wonderful character; he is so good and so kind and so aware of his culture disintegrating around him. He is a complicated person who hates what the white settlers have done to his land but who also respects and admires their ingenuity and passion. He is one of the most achingly lonely characters I have met in a very long time. He is kind to everyone, but is set apart by his race and by the ghost in his mind and by other people's memories crowding out his own memories. I fell in love with him and his quiet dignity.

I also enjoyed the story and Simmons' storytelling approach. There is a true sense of immediacy for the reader in each chapter. The narrative jumps around a lot, from the 1870s to the 1930s and between Paha Sapa and General Custer. One thing I found odd but eventually grew used to is that all dialogue is done in italics, with a dash in front. There is really never a "he said" in the whole book. This was confusing at first, especially when two characters were talking to each other, but eventually I got used to it. I also was initially confused by the jumping around in the dates, but eventually settled in. I think this book begs for a re-read so that I can appreciate all the subtleties in the writing when I go back, knowing the story's full arc.

Native American history is conveniently swept under the rug in history class; no one wants to hear about how their exalted country decimated an entire population. When Native American history is taught, the tribes are often grouped together as one people, which is unfair. And they are given these almost mystical qualities of defending the planet against the ravages of greedy white people. Simmons doesn't play this card in his novel and I'm happy for it. There are moments of idealism in the book, yes (particularly the last thirty pages or so), but his characters also acknowledge that the tribes of the Great Plains were not perfect. Simmons shows us the emotional toll that westward expansion had on one Lakota man, and how his life was affected by it. It's a very intimate and highly moving portrait. While I think the ending of the book was very protracted, it certainly gave me a lot to think about with regards to the future. And I enjoyed getting a sense of General Custer, though the first few chapters from his point of view were far more erotically charged than I'd ever have expected.

Custer comes alive in this book, and never more than when he speaks of his great love for his wife. And so I greatly appreciate Simmons' novel for reminding me, gently, that a person should not be defined by one battle, or one moment, even though history makes it so easy to do so. Black Hills is a good story, but I like the book because it reminded me that it is too easy to have a vague idea of history that can, quite frankly, be inaccurate. Or at the very least, only tell half the story. Simmons tells two sides of a story here- Paha Sapa's and Custer's, and he does so in a beautiful and empathizing manner. Highly recommended.

In 1876 following the battle of Little Big Horn, ten years old Sioux warrior Paha Sapa collects coup from the dead. However, on his last breath, the spirit of General George Custer leaves his dead body to enter that of Paha.

For the rest of his life, Paha heard Custer speaking to him inside his head. He also gained the uncanny ability to know someone's past and future by simply touching them. For himself he has remained patient having seen what will occur to the sacred Black Hills in the 1930s. Thus in 1936, the septuagenarian who worked on the monuments begins his final days of atonement and exorcism with plans to blow up Mt. Rushmore as FDR arrives on a visit.

This is a refreshing super paranormal historical thriller that grips the audience from the opening battle locale until the final confrontation inside and outside of the lead character's head. The story line is driven by Paha-Custer, but filled with plenty of action as events lead from Little Big Horn to Mt. Rushmore. Dan Simmons effortlessly switches from Ancient Greek and Dickensian mythologies to an American legend with this superb incredibly creative tale.

Harriet Klausner

While most of Dan Simmons' "historical" novels have been fantastic, this one was a disappointment. While traveling through time with both a Native American and Custer was great fun, the ending was contrived and contorted, eventually dissolving into some kind of sci-fi/environmental fantasy.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Dan Simmons could write long, compelling science fiction, fantasy and horror novels that would keep readers up so late, propping up huge tomes (CARRION COMFORT; SUMMER OF NIGHT; HYPERION and THE FALL OF HYPERION; ENDYMION and THE RISE OF ENDYMION) for so long, that carpal tunnel syndrome would set in. Around the time of the Second Coming of the G.W. Bush/Cheney administration, Simmons lost touch with his story-telling "chi". Happened somewhere in the middle of his last SF duology (ILIUM/OLYMPOS), with the second book falling off its narrative rails from the get-go, and Simmons giving into his urge to always be didactic (signs of this seriously fun-sucking urge, first cropped up in the beginning chapters of CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT -- Simmons fought back the urges with aplomb for a great while, until he sat down to begin typing ILIUM). This "new" Simmons has taken to writing historical novels that either don't know when to end, don't know where they are headed, or -- both. In the case of THE TERROR, it was copious verbiage which wounded the narrative (albeit, not fatally). In the case of DROOD, the writer had a terrific character (the fictional Wilkie Collins) but no place to go: so he ended up dragging both Collins and the reader down endless blind alleys to finally end up at...another blind alley (that was a novel which should have been a novella -- but novellas don't sell well).

Now we have BLACK HILLS. Many novels Simmons writes often harken back to one of his short(er) fictions: CARRION COMFORT was first a novella (and even better as a a huge novel); HYPERION was first a short story ("Remembering Siri"); ditto for THE HOLLOW MAN ("Eyes I Dare Not Meet in Dreams"), CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT ("All Dracula's Children"), etc. Thus, some of the themes in BLACK HILLS, the history of the Lakota, etc., can be traced back to "Sleeping With Teeth Women" (found in the story colleciton, LOVEDEATH). But the overall plot/story involves an aging indian named Paha Sapa (who happened to be near the General just as he fell dead, and) who is haunted by the ghost of George Armstrong Custer all of his life, and finds himself on the crew to help finish Mt. Rushmore. The indian decides to use that opportunity to commit a terrorist act and destroy the monument, when Pres. Franklin Delano Roosevelt visits the site. It's a good, solid idea, and one that the "old" Dan Simmons mostly gives its narrative due. Unfortunately, the "new" Dan Simmons steps in to ruin things. In DROOD he put a slimy spin on the character of Charles Dickens (brilliantly doing so via the back-stabbing "character" of Collins) and in BLACK HILLS he puts a neo-conservative spin on his fictional version of Custer, taking a man who -- despite a few attempts at revisionist history -- was and is generally acknowledged to have been egocentric and a reckless leader, and turning him into a brave, military strategist, and a sort of romance novel "leading man" (luck may have been on Custer's side many times, but he was reckless nonetheless; whether he was a romantic or just a horny individual, is something only long-dead lovers can know). While that revisionist characterization is a bit disappointing and distracting, what really slows things down is the "new" Simmons's penchant for trying to lecture, pontificate and "teach." The majority of one chapter is spent describing the building of a bridge. Don't get me wrong, it is well-done -- in fact, like most of Simmons's writing these days, it is over done -- but it is hardly necessary to the story. Such a diversion certainly has no place in a book that seeks to thrill its audience (even the "ghost" in Paha Sapa's head agrees, at one point, needling him with, "...now that you've got that out of your system, can we go get ready to keep the appointment now?").

What's more, most of the dialogue sounds like something written to be spoken on a documentary, by the guy narrating said documentary (which may be something Simmons is more suited to these days). Give a listen to Paha talking to his son: "The revolving Hotchkiss cannon had five thirty-seven-millimeter barrels and was capable of firing forty-three rounds per minute." Don't know about anyone else, but my dad never expended so much hot air, even when getting into details. And as another reviewer has already pointed out, the "new" Simmons still doesn't know when to end a story. He lets his didactic, I'm-in-love-with-everything-I-say/write urge get the better of him, tacking on an epilogue that would have been better-suited to an endnotes section. Overall, a book that falls closer to THE TERROR in its storytelling sensibilities, but still not quite far enough away from the didactic preachiness of the "new" Dan Simmons to avoid inescapable moments of narrative drudgery -- and the full-on stop of verisimilitude -- which can arise from such indulgences.