By By Dane Roberts Wans On Bookreview
Next year we observe the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln. We will be sure to see lots of books about Lincoln and the Civil War. In this epic book of Civil War lore covering the years of 1864 and 1865, we have a fictional account of a union soldier who is a half breed — half Lakota, half white — and his search for roots.
In this story, author Paulie Jenkins presents us with Ethan, a half breed who is a union soldier behind confederate lines trying to get back to the union camp with some papers.
Captured and sentenced to be hung, he runs and finds a group of union soldiers also trying to get back to camp. They are captured at Chickamauga Creek and sent to Cahaba Federal Prison where Ethan is mistreated because he looks more like his Indian side than his white side. So starts this epic tale of one person’s search to belong.
How he escapes this prison only to discover a prison of another kind forms the first part of this book. In Ethan’s’ experiences you see bigotry and injustice, loyalty and betrayal, tragedy and hope.
We tend to judge people by the color of their skin. This is unfortunate, but it is a fact of life. In “Following the Eagle” we have a story of extreme bias that drove a man from one identity to another.
The one ray of light for Ethan while he hidden in a house in Mobile by a woman named Elizabeth whom he gets involved with. She can’t acknowledge him. Yet she can hide him and become pregnant by him.
Knowing he can’t hide forever, he returns to the union army only to be charged as a spy and sentenced to death.
In the second part of this novel Ethan escapes and journeys over to the Black Hills to the Sioux nation in search of his mother’s family. “Someday, they would be together. Whether in the white man’s hereafter or the Lakota’s, he would find her.”
It is when he is with the Sioux that he has to confront the truth. One of the Sioux tells him, “What they did had nothing to do with money or books or whatever evidence they said they had. Why can’t you see it Ethan? They wanted you dead because you’re half Sioux.”
Ethan must confront his identity. Was he going to live in the white world or the world of the Indians?
The characters are well developed and complex. You really feel for Ethan The title of this book comes from the saying the Sioux have that only the eagle flew high enough to view all of Mother Earth. Ethan remembers the eagle, “He was the symbol of his mother’s people, and it was a bad omen to kill him.”
In the end he meets up with his brother, Josh, who is looking for him to bring him back to the family. Ethan, now more Indian than white, confronts his brother trying to explain why he is going to stay with the Sioux.
Josh replies, “I don’t understand you, Ethan.”
Ethan replies, “I thought maybe you would. You of all people, Josh. You’re the only one I ever told it all to.”
“You’re wrong. I don’t understand. I never will.”
Upon seeing the bullet scars in Ethan’s back, Josh says, “They shot you in the back?”
“Yes.” “I didn’t know.” Ethan answers, “Go back to Illinois, Josh. Make Elizabeth happy.”
The research for this work is well done. The book is 585 pages with an additional two pages of author’s notes. It can be obtained from www.amazon.com.
Romance and history. Great summer reading in the weeks to come. Let me hear from you at
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 18, 2008. Read the original PDF.