Custer's last campaign, narrated by the officer who loathed him.
Told chapter by chapter, Glorious follows Custer's final campaign through the eyes of Captain Frederick Benteen, a subordinate with no love for his commander. The voice is rough, sardonic frontier talk, and the story moves from a night march and Crow scouts to a thirst-crazed siege on the bluffs above the river.
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Glorious is a novel by Aram Schefrin, presented in numbered chapters, about George Custer and the Seventh on the road to the Little Big Horn. The storyteller is Captain Frederick Benteen, and his dislike of Custer is never far from the surface. He talks in a rough frontier vernacular, blunt and dryly funny, and at one point addresses a 'dear reader' directly. There is a bookish streak under the grit. In Chapter 39 he likens what he has written to Mercutio's wound, enough and true as holy writ, then lets the pencil drop and promises to see the reader in Hades. Chapter 38 puts him in Chicago's Palmer House three years after the battle, there to tell his story at Reno's Court of Inquiry and admitting he both did and did not want to come. He blames Custer's wife for his being there, and his remarks about her and about Custer's private life are venomous. He lays out Custer's apparent plan to strike the Sioux from the south, east and north without knowing precisely where they were. All Custer had to do, he insists, was follow Terry's orders. The campaign chapters are grittier. In Chapter 34 the Crow scouts appear, pompadoured and given to pranks, and Custer vows to eat a mule, a prairie dog or a hill of ants if it gets him to the Sioux. Lonesome Charlie, a man who never drank, pulls from a flask and lays out everything he owns for others to take; nobody touches it, afraid that doing so would get him killed. Chapter 35 includes a night march up Davis Creek so dark that the dust, the shrieking horses and the banging of coffee cups on saddle pommels are the only proof the column is still behind Custer. When Boyer warns that going down into the valley means waking up in hell, Custer answers that he has been there and it is not that bad. Chapter 36 begins in heat too dry to sweat in. Benteen is sent off with three companies and told nothing of the plan, and he later finds Reno without a hat, begging for help and firing wildly downhill. The shots hit nothing, Benteen observes, but probably improved Reno's mood. Chapter 37 stays on the hill after sundown, with men digging in using knives and forks, one man gone clear insane and tied down, and seventeen volunteers going down a draw for water. It also holds the image of a dead man lying with a blissful smile, hands folded, as if taking a nap. Chapter 39 moves into Custer's column in the present tense, with Lieutenant Cook scribbling a note for a trooper and Custer's brother Boston and nephew Reed whipping their horses to catch up. Benteen presents such scenes as a reconstruction, pieced together from poring over the battlefield and talking to just about everyone. The result is a Little Big Horn told as a grudge, partisan by design and vivid because of it. The narrator's language about Native Americans and others includes slurs, and the violence is described plainly.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants the Little Big Horn as a novel rather than a lecture, and who enjoys a narrator with a grudge, rough frontier speech and close-up detail of cavalry life under fire.
What sets it apart: Instead of a heroic or neutral telling, Glorious gives the story of Custer's end to a subordinate who resents him, so every order, delay and misjudgment comes through his contempt. That grudging memoir runs alongside scenes from Custer's column that the narrator admits he pieced together afterward, as best he could.
In this podiobook: On June 25th, 1876, General George Custer died at the Little Big Horn.Why did Custer rush into battle against the largest agglomeration of Indians ever seen in the West, without waiting for support from other cavalry contingents which were on their way to the scene?To answer that, you need to know what happened on June 27th."Glorious," a podcast novel by Aram Schefrin, tells Custer's story from after the Civil War through the date of his massacre, in the voice of Captain Frederick Benteen, the soldier who hated him.
Reno has lost his hat and half his men; you've found your kind of battlefield suspense.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Custer's confidence starts to buckle as battlefield reports outrun his plans.
This single episode keeps Custer inside a tactical crisis that tightens by the minute. Reno's stalled attack and retreat into timber turn the push toward the river into a scramble for time, while reports come in by horse and Custer responds with new orders, a carefully rolled…
A disastrous order sends three companies into a fight no one can properly map.
Glorious turns a cavalry maneuver into a study of command gone dangerously vague. In the hot, dry Wolf Mountains, Custer orders the narrator to take Edgerly's, Weir's, and Godfrey's companies on a left oblique, fight whatever appears, and send word back without saying where…
Tamil historical fiction with royal stakes.
Chapter 39 of Glorious follows Custer, Reno, Boyer, and their cavalry columns as they approach a large Indigenous village near the Little Horn.
The narrator recognizes Custer at Reno's trial despite his scars, beard, and buffalo hide.
Glorious, Chapter 37 follows Benteen and Reno through a night siege where wounded soldiers cannot reach a river fifty yards away.
Chapter 36 follows a first-person account of Custer sending three companies toward the Little Horn with almost no information about the Sioux.
Chapter 34 follows Custer, Terry, and Gibbon as they map routes from the Rosebud toward the Little Horn and plan movements for June 24 and June 26.
Glorious Chapter 33 follows Custer's Seventh Cavalry across the Yellowstone and Powder River country as Terry's expedition searches for Sioux camps.
Terry helps Custer recover from a Senate testimony dispute and seek a place with the Seventh Cavalry.
In Glorious Chapter 31, Custer is called to Washington to testify about corruption involving Secretary Belknap and trading posts.
This episode depicts Custer's reconnaissance and a skirmish with Sioux warriors before the Battle of Little Big Horn.
A fictional narrative following General Custer's life from after the Civil War to his death at Little Big Horn, told in the voice of Captain Frederick Benteen.
A fictionalized account of General Custer's life leading up to the Battle of Little Big Horn, narrated by Captain Frederick Benteen.
A fictional memoir of an aging cavalry captain reflecting on Custer's last stand.