Ghost Legion: A Western Story

Mr Boggs would appear to specialise in taking conventional genres and giving them a new slant which often throws an unexpected light on people and events ,a light not shone by conventional history books or legend.In that wonderful book "East of the Border" he showed us Wild Bill Hickock and Buffalo Bill as fish out of water -away from their normal environment out West and taking their first tentative ,toddling steps as "actors" Ghost Legion does a similar thing with the American War of Independence by taking as its subject the war in the South Carolina back country -a neglected area of study -at ;east in UK accounts of the Colonial Rebellion,(which I have always seen as not a foreign war in UK history terms but as a Civil war between 2 groups of Britons who just happened to be on different continents .Sorry,US Readers -its my English patriotism coming out!)Mr Boggs seems to endorse my view that this was a Civil war -every bit as much as the evnts of 1861-1865 The book has 2 main protagonists ,whose paths converge and intersect as the book nears its climax.One is a freed black loyalist ,Stuart Brodie,whose younger ,intellectually challenged brother has been hung by rebels and the family inn burnt to the ground .He joins a British force under the command of the charismatic ,straight arrow British soldier Major Patrick Ferguson ,who for all his many virtues is a disaster as a commander ,making some key errors of judgement The other main figure is "Marty" ,a woman masquerading as a man -as her abusive husband ,to be precise .She fights and lives with the "patriots",where she falls in love with an rebel officer "Lieutenant O 'Keefe" As the two opposing forces -the British and the "ghost legion" of rebels converge for the decisive battle so the paths of all the characters become intertwined . This is an even handed portrait of the conflict ,unlike the sanctimonious drivel perpetrated by"Professor" Mel Gibson in that nonsensical waste of celluloid "The Patriot".There are atrocities on both sides and just as many or more good people striving to maintain some standards of decency and conduct amidst the carnage .The battle scenes are pretty graphic and the book has a inexorable forward movement that marks it out as the work of a borm communicator and storyteller Now,if only he would give us a novel about the fate of the loyalists (Tories)and loyalist blacks after the war -that would be worth reading as well This is a fine book and recommended to all who enjoy novels about US history and especially its early years