Alida Becker in The New York Times:
Don’t be fooled by the title of Stone’s prodigiously researched debut, THE BEAUTY OF THE DAYS GONE BY. Although it celebrates the grandeur of the West Texas landscape, with its “oceans of tall grass prairies, infinite heaven of blue skies,” it’s also an unflinching portrait of the brutal struggle in the 1860s and ’70s between frontier settlers and the Native inhabitants of what was known as the Comancheria. “Misfortune,” we are told, “was a given in those times.”
RL Terry would seem to have experienced more than his share of that misfortune. As the novel opens, he returns to his burning homestead to find his wife near death and his two young sons, Sam and Charlie, kidnapped by a Kiowa raiding party. Terry’s decade-long search for his children and his older son’s immersion in Comanche warrior culture drive a narrative that moves back and forth in time, with telling details added by the 20th-century reminiscences of Terry’s longtime friend, Charles Goodnight.
More here.
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