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Custer's Brother's Horse
A young Confederate captain with a grisly past as a behinds-the-lines cavalry raider in the mountains of Tennessee is on his way home to his impoverished family plantation north of Houston in the last days of the Civil War. In Austin, Capt. Jerod Robin is accused of murder and is thrown into the stockade by U.S. Army Capt. Santana Leatherwood, a Texan whose family has feuded bitterly for decades with the Robin family over a piece of land on Big Neck Bayou in southeast Texas.
In the stockade Robin meets British novelist, journalist and adventurer Edmund Varney, who has come to Austin to write the life story of Lt. Tom Custer, heroic younger brother of famous General George Armstrong Custer. Varney is charged with attempting to steal Tom Custer’s legendary warhorse, Athena, upon whose back Custer recently won two Congressional Medals of Honor within six days of fighting in Virginia.
The two prisoners are marched to a kangaroo court in a foundry east of town, where they stand trial beside a 16-year-old mulatto girl, Flora Bowprie, who has come from New Orleans searching for her father but has had her mules and wagon stolen and has herself been arrested as a runaway slave.
Homicidal events growing out of their trial cause the rebel captain, the British author, and the young fortune teller from the French Quarter to flee for their lives from a Seventh Cavalry squad led by Santana Leatherwood and by Tom Custer, himself, mounted on his great Arabian horse.
As the story races to the inevitable showdown between the Robins and Leatherwoods, two families on opposite sides in the Civil War, the three fleeing prisoners encounter the Spanish wife of a Texas senator who is facing a lynching by German nightriders. At Burroughs Cove on the Colorado River they sail into the midst of an outlaw gang dedicated to burning out Unionists and ambushing Yankee soldiers. They meet an extraordinary woman who has spent the war running a hideout for draft dodgers known as brush men.
Along the way Varney reveals the truth of why he tried to ride out of Austin on the war horse Athena and tells of his adventures in India and Afghanistan. As a mercenary soldier fighting for a Punjabi rajah he saw an entire British army massacred at the Khyber Pass on their retreat from Kabul, and suffered two great losses of his own that he has never gotten over.
Before the final confrontation Jerod Robin hears a dark accusation about his birth and his mother that lends a special ferocity to the showdown which causes a witness, an aged slave, to believe the world is ending.
Then the story of Custer’s Brother’s Horse takes a twist that will surprise and please you. This is a horse for the ages.
In the stockade Robin meets British novelist, journalist and adventurer Edmund Varney, who has come to Austin to write the life story of Lt. Tom Custer, heroic younger brother of famous General George Armstrong Custer. Varney is charged with attempting to steal Tom Custer’s legendary warhorse, Athena, upon whose back Custer recently won two Congressional Medals of Honor within six days of fighting in Virginia.
The two prisoners are marched to a kangaroo court in a foundry east of town, where they stand trial beside a 16-year-old mulatto girl, Flora Bowprie, who has come from New Orleans searching for her father but has had her mules and wagon stolen and has herself been arrested as a runaway slave.
Homicidal events growing out of their trial cause the rebel captain, the British author, and the young fortune teller from the French Quarter to flee for their lives from a Seventh Cavalry squad led by Santana Leatherwood and by Tom Custer, himself, mounted on his great Arabian horse.
As the story races to the inevitable showdown between the Robins and Leatherwoods, two families on opposite sides in the Civil War, the three fleeing prisoners encounter the Spanish wife of a Texas senator who is facing a lynching by German nightriders. At Burroughs Cove on the Colorado River they sail into the midst of an outlaw gang dedicated to burning out Unionists and ambushing Yankee soldiers. They meet an extraordinary woman who has spent the war running a hideout for draft dodgers known as brush men.
Along the way Varney reveals the truth of why he tried to ride out of Austin on the war horse Athena and tells of his adventures in India and Afghanistan. As a mercenary soldier fighting for a Punjabi rajah he saw an entire British army massacred at the Khyber Pass on their retreat from Kabul, and suffered two great losses of his own that he has never gotten over.
Before the final confrontation Jerod Robin hears a dark accusation about his birth and his mother that lends a special ferocity to the showdown which causes a witness, an aged slave, to believe the world is ending.
Then the story of Custer’s Brother’s Horse takes a twist that will surprise and please you. This is a horse for the ages.
297 pages, Hardcover
First published October 15, 2007
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36 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
January 16, 2026
This is turning out to be the year of the Westerns for me--I've been reading them more than I usually do. I just finished one with an intriguing title--"Custer's Brother's Horse," published in 2007. It's a story set in Texas at the end of the Civil War, a chaotic time to be sure. What made the story most interesting for me was the cast of characters.
We have General Custer's brother in the story--Tom, his younger brother, a genuine hero of the Civil War, who won not just one Medal of Honor, but two. But the main protagonist is a young Confederate captain named Jerod Robin, who's trying to get back to his wife and child on the family plantation in East Texas. The story begins with Jerod in a prison stockade, placed there by US Army Captain Leatherwood, a Texan Unionist. It seems there was a long-standing and bitter feud between the two families. In the stockade, the Rebel meets a British novelist and adventurer named Edmund Varney. Varney attempted to steal the magnificent Arabian mare, Athena, which belonged to Lieutenant Tom Custer. Lt. Custer was leading an advance squad of Union cavalry into Texas to set up the occupation there, his brother George to follow with the Seventh Cavalry. While at their trial, Jerod and Varney meet a teen-aged biracial girl, Flora Bowprie, who was a fortune teller from the French Quarter of New Orleans. She was arrested as a "runaway slave," as free blacks are not permitted in Texas.
The three prisoners are able to make their escape and are forced to flee for their lives with Tom Custer and Capt. Leatherwood with the Union cavalry in pursuit....And what will happen to Tom Custer's horse?
We have General Custer's brother in the story--Tom, his younger brother, a genuine hero of the Civil War, who won not just one Medal of Honor, but two. But the main protagonist is a young Confederate captain named Jerod Robin, who's trying to get back to his wife and child on the family plantation in East Texas. The story begins with Jerod in a prison stockade, placed there by US Army Captain Leatherwood, a Texan Unionist. It seems there was a long-standing and bitter feud between the two families. In the stockade, the Rebel meets a British novelist and adventurer named Edmund Varney. Varney attempted to steal the magnificent Arabian mare, Athena, which belonged to Lieutenant Tom Custer. Lt. Custer was leading an advance squad of Union cavalry into Texas to set up the occupation there, his brother George to follow with the Seventh Cavalry. While at their trial, Jerod and Varney meet a teen-aged biracial girl, Flora Bowprie, who was a fortune teller from the French Quarter of New Orleans. She was arrested as a "runaway slave," as free blacks are not permitted in Texas.
The three prisoners are able to make their escape and are forced to flee for their lives with Tom Custer and Capt. Leatherwood with the Union cavalry in pursuit....And what will happen to Tom Custer's horse?
August 17, 2020
Huh...had this marked as "read" back in 2009, but going through it again, I had zero memory of the story, characters...just nuthin'.
Part The Thicket, part Cold Mountain, even part Huckleberry Finn, this is by no means a bad story - it just lacks the magic of any of those classics. It started off a solid 4 stars, but then lost points as it lost steam towards the end; too much chatter and not enough plot. That said, Shrake creates a likeable, Twain-ian cast of well-defined oddballs; and I especially liked how he tied his English character's previous military adventures in India and Afghanistan into this tale of Texas at the end of the Civil War - indeed, he comes off a bit like a more respectable version of Harry Flashman, George MacDonald Fraser's famous, Zelig-like cad.
Custer's Brother's Horse certainly deserves more respect and recognition than it's gotten over the past 13 years - still just 70+ ratings? - and if you've got nothing better waiting for you, is worth a quick read. Our library actually has a copy, although I think I picked mine up as one of those rare find at our local Dollar Tree, (I still check every time I go in there, since aside from the usual drek there's the occasional "real" book, like Hannah Kent's wonderful Burial Rites and China Mieville's interesting This Census Taker).
Part The Thicket, part Cold Mountain, even part Huckleberry Finn, this is by no means a bad story - it just lacks the magic of any of those classics. It started off a solid 4 stars, but then lost points as it lost steam towards the end; too much chatter and not enough plot. That said, Shrake creates a likeable, Twain-ian cast of well-defined oddballs; and I especially liked how he tied his English character's previous military adventures in India and Afghanistan into this tale of Texas at the end of the Civil War - indeed, he comes off a bit like a more respectable version of Harry Flashman, George MacDonald Fraser's famous, Zelig-like cad.
Custer's Brother's Horse certainly deserves more respect and recognition than it's gotten over the past 13 years - still just 70+ ratings? - and if you've got nothing better waiting for you, is worth a quick read. Our library actually has a copy, although I think I picked mine up as one of those rare find at our local Dollar Tree, (I still check every time I go in there, since aside from the usual drek there's the occasional "real" book, like Hannah Kent's wonderful Burial Rites and China Mieville's interesting This Census Taker).
October 3, 2019
This was a really strange book. Don't get me wrong -- it was engrossing with well-developed characters and a hell of a setting, but I really felt bad for the horse. The book ends on sort-of an up-note, so idiot me had to Google Custer's brother (so I could find out about the horse, of course) and what happened to him. Do yourself a favor and don't do that. Just read the book and be happily ignorant of actual American history.
Then again, this could be an alternative history book and Custer's brother's horse could have lived a long, happy life. I mean, there's nothing in the book that says it's not. 95% of the book isn't factual, anyway, so why not the Battle of the Bighorn?
So, let's look at the actual star of the show that flashes in and out of these crazy humans like a comet in a cloudy night -- Athena, the sixteen hand high Arabian horse. Now, it's rare that Arabians get that tall but it does happen. Here's one -- She's So Tempting RMA, foaled in 2008.
Custer's brother claims that "no one rides her but me," implying that she's a one-man horse. Clearly, she's not. This gives an otherworldly shade to the story (as well as other strange but entertaining happenings) but I think Athena could be ridden by anyone good enough to stay on her and not treat her like a machine.
On the one hand, I enjoyed reading the book. On the other, Athena's on her way to the Bighorn. Reality sucks.
Then again, this could be an alternative history book and Custer's brother's horse could have lived a long, happy life. I mean, there's nothing in the book that says it's not. 95% of the book isn't factual, anyway, so why not the Battle of the Bighorn?
So, let's look at the actual star of the show that flashes in and out of these crazy humans like a comet in a cloudy night -- Athena, the sixteen hand high Arabian horse. Now, it's rare that Arabians get that tall but it does happen. Here's one -- She's So Tempting RMA, foaled in 2008.
Custer's brother claims that "no one rides her but me," implying that she's a one-man horse. Clearly, she's not. This gives an otherworldly shade to the story (as well as other strange but entertaining happenings) but I think Athena could be ridden by anyone good enough to stay on her and not treat her like a machine.
On the one hand, I enjoyed reading the book. On the other, Athena's on her way to the Bighorn. Reality sucks.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 26, 2017
Set in immediate post-Civil War Texas, this novel reminds me of Stephen Wright's "Amalgamation Polka" with a touch of Charles Portis. It is funny and deadly at the same time, and the struggle between the Robin family and the evil Leatherwood clan is at its center. Throw in Edmund Varney, English soldier-turned writer of romances (ala Sir Walter Scott), Flo Beaupree, a free black woman, and Tom Custer's warhorse, Athena (once Varney's years before in India, amazingly), and the result is a picaresque novel by way of a western by way of a Civil War novel.
November 25, 2020
I only knew of Edwin "Bud" Shrake as a sportswriter until reading an article about him in Texas Monthly. Since that time I have enjoyed two of his novels and look forward to reading more. Custer's Brother's Horse is an entertaining post Civil War tale about a Confederate officer trying to return to his parents' Texas cotton plantation, an English novelist/adventurer/former military officer and a free half black half French young New Orleans fortune teller on a quest to find her missing French father in Texas. Throw in the theft of Union cavalry officer Thomas Custer's horse and the revenge seeking Santana Leatherwood in pursuit of his former Confederate enemy and you have the making of highly entertaining story. Custer is the younger brother of Gen. George A. Custer of Little Bighorn infamy and is treated with a bit more sympathy than Thomas Berger showed him in Little Big Man. Shrake was a gifted story teller and an even more interesting character in real life than the characters of his novels. This is a fun read and I highly recommend it to anyone interested historical novels of the old West.
September 9, 2020
A fun western post Civil War romp in Texas. Great characters and dialogue. George Armstrong Custer did have a brother Tom (hense the name of the book), but I couldn't find any historical information about his horse named Athena in this book.
December 19, 2007
Down to earth characters similar to those in 'Cold Mountain' but with humor and a touch of whimsy. Enjoyed them all.
April 12, 2008
Bud Shrake's post Civil War story is a wonderful story. Not a big fan of Historical writing, but this one got me interested!
July 21, 2008
cheesy ending, but a fun read...
February 12, 2011
Entertaining. Shrake creates personalities very well. This story seems to be somewhat tongue-in-the-cheek compared to his major and better known novels, but I really enjoyed it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 14, 2012
Interesting take on a the Custer story.
February 1, 2015
A fast paced fictional novel, post Civial War. Keeped me on the edge of my seat.
July 7, 2024
Was a great book for the 4th of July weekend. Moved quickly, pleasant read…
December 20, 2025
Pretty good story with a decent conclusion. A few "too new" references but nothing to completely knock one out of the story.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews