Like you, dear reader, I have a thing for Lost Causes. But do you ever feel like the usual stuff won’t quite cut it? Do you ever feel, for instance, like the Southern cause isn’t quite lost enough?
Well, along comes H. W. Crocker III. A Southerner by birth and the grace of God, Crocker is the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Civil War. (Politically incorrect is an understatement.) But in a new series of satirical novels Crocker seeks to redeem the memory of George Armstrong Custer: the least celebrated cavalry officer in the history of the United States.
Well, “redeem” might be putting it a bit strongly. Custer is the same arrogant, ignorant dandy we all love to hate. But Crocker also draws out the more noble aspects of his personality: his determination, his sense of duty, his courage, his fine manners. Here, as in history, Custer is equal parts dashing and ridiculous.
In the first volume of the series, Armstrong (2018), Crocker imagines that Custer survived the Battle of Little Big Horn. Assuming the ingenius pseudonym “Armstrong,” he sets out to prove that he was betrayed by his own comrades.
In the next brand-new installment, Armstrong Rides Again!, we rejoin the late general and his dog, Bad Boy, as they resolve to travel to San Francisco. By page eight, Armstrong meets two traveling companions: a disgraced Buffalo Soldier and an insane German survivalist. By page twelve, the deserter and the German have died gruesome deaths. An homage to Cormac McCarthy, no doubt.
After meeting up with some old friends—an Indian scout-cum-Renaissance man and a war bride masquerading as a nun—the trio set out for San Fran. On the train, they meet a beautiful Latina aristocrat and her companion, Lt. Ambrose Bierce. Somehow, Custer and Bierce wind up serving as mercenaries in Neustraguano, a tiny fictional kingdom off the coast of Mexico.
Here’s where things get really good, as the gritty modern Western transitions into a biting modern satire.
Neustraguano (pretty sure that’s Pig Spanish for “shithole country”) is ruled by a monarch known only as El Caudillo. He happens to be a dead ringer for Donald Trump. Neustraguano is being torn apart by civil war, and El Caudillo’s own advisors support the rebels. He stands amidst his ministers of state and tells his American mercs,
If you require political information, talk to these men. Just don’t believe anything they say. And don’t believe our newspapers—they get all their information from them.
The ministers are constantly rolling their eyes, tut-tutting their sovereign, bewailing his “vulgarity”—even as the rebels burn Neustraguano to the ground. It sounds absurd, until you realize… it happened right here, just about a year ago. Pretty wild, huh?
The Armstrong-Caudillo alliance is a thing of beauty. You wouldn’t immeidately think The Donald has much in common with a 19th century cavalry officer, but there it is. (In fact, they’re both teetotalers.) Applauding hs new master’s plans to make Neustraguano great again, Armstrong declares,
I appreciate His Majesty’s wisdom. I too want a country where the women are smaller than the men, where beauty is perpetuated, where beef is freely available, where milk can be drunk happily, and where children are not thrown into volcanoes or eaten for dinner.
And, sure, that all seems reasonable. But have you seen El Caudillo’s tweets?
Let me say, this isn’t a book to buy your brother-in-law, the Sandernista who teaches history at the local public school. Not even as a joke. Armstrong Rides Again! is so well written that he probably won’t realize it’s a work of conservative satire until the very end, if at all. (“What, El Caudillo escapes from the drug-addled cannibals? Where’s the justice?”)
This will only confirm what you’ve always suspected: that your brother is a fool, and that you can’t take him seriously. That, in turn, may open up a rift between you and your sister. And you wouldn’t want that. She’s still basically a good egg.
But for anyone else on your nice list, Armstrong Rides Again! is sure to be a hit. It has something for everyone who isn’t a It’s as rugged as Zane Grey, as funny as P. G. Wodehouse, as smart as Evelyn Waugh, and as sharp as… well, Ambrose Bierce, as a matter of fact. You don’t want to miss it.