John Foley
on the
Great Bloody Plains
Available Now!
Two men named John Foley rode into the Valley of the Little Bighorn with George Armstrong Custer and the 7th Cavalry. Only one John Foley returned. This obscure survivor, polar opposite of the famous Custer, presents an unusual perspective, and the reconstruction of his eighty-six years results in a book where the lines between biography, history, and fiction essentially vanish. Readers familiar with only the more popular anecdotes regarding the War Between the States, Reconstruction, and the Plains Indian Wars will find themselves in Foley’s boots, confronted with the gritty, factual depictions of a distinctly American time capsule.
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Little more than a boy when he arrives from Ireland, John toils for a decade on the canals, railroads, and farms of Ohio. At twenty-one, spurned by his unfaithful lover, he joins the Federal cavalry at the outset of the Civil War. Following the Confederate surrender, John finds himself without prospects. Facing trouble with the law, he flees to Chicago, enlists in K Troop of the newly formed 7th Cavalry, and is promptly stationed on the Great Plains. Led in the field by Custer, the famous Union war hero, the 7th endeavors to protect frontier settlers, overland travelers, and most importantly, the fledgling railroad’s westward expansion.
While no soldier is safe from the native warriors fighting to turn back the White invasion into the lands of their ancestors, garrison life holds dangers of its own. Foley’s perceived interest in Elizabeth Custer raises the ire of her husband. When troops are requested for Reconstruction duty in the South, John’s K Troop is among the first chosen to go, and it serves there until the Federal Government all but abandons its twelve-year shadow war against the Ku Klux Klan and its allies.
On the eve of the country’s eagerly awaited centennial celebration, and for the first time in the 7th Cavalry’s ten-year history, all twelve companies assemble in the Dakota wilderness. They march into uncharted Montana Territory, ordered to find and punish the free Sioux and Cheyenne for their refusal to accept the latest demand from the Great White Father in Washington. The disastrous campaign results in the utter disintegration of military order, the death of Custer, and nearly half the regiment. In the aftermath, Private John Foley, afflicted body and mind, faces a future dependent upon the bureaucrats who dole out his meager pension. Confronted with overwhelming odds once again, John fights on, obsessed by visions of love, devotion, and independence.