An Apache Princess

by Charles King

Charles King was a 19th century United States soldier and a distinguished writer. He graduated from West Point in 1866 and served in the Army during the Indian Wars under George Crook. During the Philippine-American War, King was placed in command of the 1st Brigade in Henry W. Lawton's division. He led his brigade during the Battle of Manila and sailed for Santa Cruz with Lawton's division. An Apache Princess is a tale of the Indian frontier first published in 1903. An excerpt reads," For a moment, without love or fear in the eyes of either, the white girl and the brown gazed at each other across the intervening water mirror and spoke no word. Then, slowly, the former approached the brink, looked in the direction indicated by the little dingy index and saw nothing to warrant the recall. Moreover, she was annoyed to think that all this time, perhaps, the Indian girl had been lurking in that sheltering grove and stealthily watching her. Once more she turned away, this time with a toss of her head that sent the russet-brown tresses tumbling about her slim back and shoulders, and at once the hand-clap was repeated, low, but imperative, and Tonto, the biggest of the two big hounds, uplifted one ear and growled a challenge. "What do you want?" questioned the white girl, across the estranging waters. For answer the brown girl placed her left forefinger on her lips, and again distinctly pointed to a little clump of willows a dozen rods below, but on the westward side."

Genres: Classics

218 pages, Paperback

First published February 12, 1903

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Charles King was a United States soldier and a distinguished writer. He graduated from West Point in 1866 and served in the Army during the Indian Wars under George Crook. He was wounded in the arm forcing his retirement from the regular army. During this time he became acquainted with Buffalo Bill Cody. King would later write scripts for several of Cody's silents films. In 1898, he was appointed brigadier general of volunteers and sailed to the Philippines during the Spanish-American War; he also led a brigade during the ensuing Philippine-American War. He returned to the United States and was active in the Wisconsin National Guard and in training troops for World War I. He wrote and edited over 60 books and novels.

Reviews

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a good story. However, the writing was choppy and confusing in places; the characters were good, but the mechanics of the plot underdeveloped. It held my interest very well, and yet the details had a way of getting scrambled, so I had to backtrack numerous times to decipher what happened in what order. There was an interesting mystery, but I got the feeling that the author was much more used to writing about the ways of the frontier than of spinning out a properly paced mystery, which led to the confusion.

[Ted Duke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strange book. Interesting story-line, if you can keep up with the numerous characters and the timeline. The wording is very unusual, almost at times like a dialect.

I'm a romanticist, so I stuck with it to see if it developed the way I thought it should, but must admit I was sorely tempted to lay my Kindle down or perhaps to even throw it across the room.

[Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like historical fiction and stories about Native Americans, you'll love An Apache Princess. With reminiscent descriptions of the Arizona topography, this story of soldier's life at camp there is richly evocative and transports the reader, almost to the sand and horseback.

[Rachel]

DNF at 38% (ebook)

For such a short book (just over 200 pages), I found this book to be incredibly long.

The book starts off with a young girl outside the fort who happens upon a native american girl. What will happen? Will the become friends? Will they get caught? This seems like it's going to be an good story! Well, who knows what happens to these two because then it switches to other characters and life at the fort. We're given some backstory on fort life, the landscape, army rotations (were they considered army then? There's a corporal so I assume so). The descriptions were excellent. I was instantly whisked away into Arizona fort living in the 1800s. For that I give it 5 stars.

So why the DNF?
Simply, the story jumped around too much. Yes, I was instantly transported to that time period, but the story was too jumbled. I had a hard time following the timeline and what was happening. I felt like I had experienced fort life by the 20% mark and wouldn't get too much more out of it by continuing the book.