cover image Buckskins

Buckskins

Albert R. Booky. Sunstone Press, $12.95 (236pp) ISBN 978-0-86534-125-8

Booky ( Son of Manitou ) has fashioned less a historical novel than snippets of 19th-century American frontier history awkwardly linked by the merest wisps of fictional justification. Nat Cochran's ambition is to see the land west of the Mississippi, and although the green lad naively sets out alone, he is quickly taken under the wing of veteran frontiersman Rees Marquette. Rees coaches Nat on wilderness warfare and survival, Indian ways and beaver trapping until they part. Nat heads for New Mexico, where he acquires another companion, Three Tongues, a Comanche warrior he rescues from a grass fire. Under his tutelage, Nat learns the rudiments of Comanche culture. He must be an incredibly slow study, though: after living with the tribe for three years and marrying into their group, he asks, ``Where is the Happy Hunting Ground?'' Booky's fondness for introducing history through transparent ploys and, worse yet, absurdly stilted dialogue (``I forgot that Jefferson purchased the Louisiana Territory back in 1830, didn't he?'') will discourage all but the most determined readers. (Oct.)