cover image Elizabeth Bacon Custer and the Making of a Myth

Elizabeth Bacon Custer and the Making of a Myth

Shirley A. Ceckie. University of Oklahoma Press, $34.95 (419pp) ISBN 978-0-8061-2501-5

In 1864 the charming Elizabeth ``Libbie'' Bacon (1842-1933) married the flamboyant George Armstrong Custer, a 23-year-old Civil War brigadier general. Adapting enthusiastically to military life, she traveled with her husband to frontier posts and actively promoted his career as he achieved fame driving the Sioux and the Cheyenne Indian tribes onto reservations. In this insightful and extensively researched biography, Leckie ( Unlikely Warriors ) provides a look into the Custers' political and cultural worlds and documents their conflicts as well as their strong erotic bonds. After her husband's death at the battle of Little Bighorn in 1876, Libbie supported herself by lecturing and writing about her life with him. She devoted her energies to idealizing Custer as a hero, attacking critics who asserted that he had disobeyed orders and led his men into certain death at Bighorn. Illustrations. History Book Club selection. (Apr.)