Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the American Frontier

This richly layered portrait of the 19th-century frontier from historian Nelson (Saving Yellowstone) spotlights figures whose complex lives embody an era of “chaotic and unstable... transformation.” They include Jim Beckworth, son of an enslaved woman and a white father, who spent years living as a member of an Apsaalooke community because a grieving mother insisted he was her dead son; Maria Gertrudis Barcelo, a Hispana woman who grew rich playing cards and whose “ability to assess the rapidly changing geopolitics of Nuevo Mexico” brought her fame and influence; and Little Wolf, a Northern Cheyenne “master strategist” who led his people on a thrilling flight for freedom, but turned to alcohol when he fell short. Nelson weaves her subjects’ lives together—they often quite literally cross paths—while simultaneously showing how their stories were changed or erased in favor of a more clear-cut frontier myth of white male dominance. Along the way, she highlights moments where Americans could have achieved a more just future—for instance, California missed an opportunity to write “full citizenship for all comers” into its constitution—while also offering vibrant details of daily life, like ruminative scenes where Sacajawea forages for wild licorice and artichokes and, later on, famously insists that she get to see the ocean. This complicated, sprawling epic is untamed in a good way. (Mar.)