Libbie — Judy Alter

More than 100 years after his death at Little Big Horn, General George Armstrong Custer remains firmly entrenched in the American imagination. Alter, a Golden Spur winner, looks at the Custer myth from the first-person perspective of his widow, Elizabeth Bacon Custer. Libbie's narrative begins when she is 12 years old and grieving her recently deceased mother. Custer, summering with his family in Monroe, Michigan, offers some heartfelt encouragement to the young girl. Their courtship doesn't actually begin until years later when Custer has already graduated from West Point. Even then, though, Libbie must overcome the objections of her father and stepmother, who feel that being the wife of a career military man isn't fitting for the daughter of a judge. What follows is a genuinely moving love story based on three books written by the real-life Libbie, on numerous biographies of Custer, and on surviving correspondence. Life with Autie, as Libbie called Custer, was far from perfect--he was a notorious womanizer--but it was intense, exciting, and romantic.