America has a mythic story that is inhabited by giants, men like General George Armstrong Custer, Captain Thomas Ward Custer, and Lieutenant James Calhoun. They live large on the silver screen, in literature, and in the American imagination. We can all see them on Last Stand Hill, out of ammunition, their sabers drawn, knowing the end is coming. But there is another story—a story that has largely been ignored for over a century and a half. It’s the powerful and heartrending tale of what happened to the wives they left behind after the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Hounded by the media and tormented by souvenir hunters, they were not allowed to move beyond the sorrow.
Once or twice in a lifetime comes a meticulously researched book that so radically changes your understanding of a historical event it is as though the scales fall from your eyes and you actually see what happened for the first time. The Widowed Ones: Beyond the Battle of the Little Bighorn is that book.
Listen to the women’s side of the story. We promise you will never be the same.
— W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O’Neal Gear, New York Times bestselling authors of Dissolution and The Ice Orphan
The Widowed Ones is based on a highly original idea; it’s an authentic look into the lives of those left behind after battle. In this case, it’s the Battle of the Little Bighorn, and the main character, in this latest of Chris Enss’s non-fiction books about women of the west, is Elizabeth Custer.
Custer and the officers who fell during battle were dedicated soldiers. But they were also husbands and brothers, sons and fathers. When they died, they left an extraordinary gap in their wives’ lives. There was no income. It was difficult for a woman to find a respectable job. There were children and aging parents to care for. There was the deep grief that each widow carried throughout her life.
The women in The Widowed Ones rode with their husbands into the frontier. They set about making homes in new territory. Elizabeth Custer often rode 70 and 80 miles per day with her husband, and she reveled in the adventure. Other wives chose to stay in camp.
These women had one thing in common—they each lost their partner in a polarizing battle. They formed, what we would call now, a support group. The women of the Widows’ Circle met with each other, commiserated, and supported each other. Those who could not be present stayed in touch by telegraph and letter. They were the only ones who truly understood each other’s situation. They were watched by a worldwide press. Their motto? “Once a widow, always cautious.”
The Widowed Ones is exceptional in several ways, not the least of which is that every detail was carefully researched but it reads as if it were a novel. Very few non-fiction books are difficult for a reader to put down. This is one of those books.
— Win and Meredith Blevins, Best Selling Authors of The Darkness Rolling and Moonlight Water
“The rigor of the scholarly research on display here is quite simply astonishing, as the authors seem to leave no stone unturned.”
— Kirkus Reviews
“This is a perspicacious study that not only captures these particular women’s plights, but also an age in which independence for women came with extensive difficulties.”
— Kirkus Reviews
“Well-researched and dramatically conveyed historical account.”
— Kirkus Reviews