Book Review: Siblings captured by Comanche in 'Ben Clayton'

Friday, September 2, 2011  

"Lamar Clayton, a taciturn, old-fashioned West Texas rancher, is the central character in Stephen Harrigan’s well-crafted novel “Remember Ben Clayton.” As a young man, Lamar rode on a number of the great cattle drives from Texas to the stockyards in Kansas and lived the cowboy’s life in full.

More significantly, the experience altered his life for good and bad, but mostly the latter. He was captured at the age of 12 along with his elder sister, Jewell, by a band of Comanche who slaughtered the rest of his family. He was with the tribe for nearly two years, joining its war parties and becoming wilder than the wildest Indian, until he was traded by his captors for ransom money offered by U.S. military officials.

When the novel opens, however, the Wild West is long since past, World War I has just come to an end, and the 70-year-old Lamar is in search of a sculptor to memorialize his son Ben, who died in the trenches of France and was buried near where he fell."

Get the Story:
BOOK REVIEW: ‘Remember Ben Clayton’ (The Washington Times 9/2)