Come Sundown
Come Sundown is an intriguing tale about an Englishman, Honore Greenwood, who found his way to America and to the frontier West in the 1830s. By profession, he was a trader, but he married a Comanche woman and learned the ways of the Indian people. This Englishman, known as Plenty Man by the Comanche, was good friends with Kit Carson and the Bent Brothers, who established trading forts along the Arkansas River in present-day southeastern Colorado. Most of this adventure, though, takes place at Adobe Walls in the panhandle of Texas.
In Honore Greenwood, or Plenty Man, Blakely has developed an interesting character, and he narrates the story. Through Plenty Man’s exploits, which include riding with Kit Carson in the New Mexico Volunteers in the Civil War and narrowly escaping the massacre of a Comanche Village – where Cynthia Ann Parker, a white captive, was finally found – the reader is treated to an adventurous tale based on historical events. For example, although it is fictionalized here, Cynthia Ann Parker’s life as a Comanche wife and mother of Quanah Parker, future chief of the Comanche people, is convincing and adds to what the reader may already know of the Comanche and Texas history.
Come Sundown is a very good read and will certainly be a contender for the Spur Award.