On a scorching June Sunday in 1876, thousands of Indian warriors - Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho - converged on a grassy ridge above the valley of Montana's Little Bighorn River. On the ridge five companies of United States cavalry - 262 soldiers, comprising officers and troopers - fought desperately but hopelessly. When the guns fell silent, no soldier - including their commanding officer, Lt Col. George Armstrong Custer - had survived. Custer's Last Stand is among the most enduring events in American history - 130 years after the fact, books continue to be written and people continue to argue about even the most basic details surrounding the Little Bighorn. Evan S. Connell, whom Joyce Carol Oates has described as 'one of our most interesting and intelligent American writers', wrote what continues to be the most reliable - and compulsively readable - account of the subject. Connell makes good use of his research and novelist's eye for story and detail to re-create the heroism, foolishness and savagery of this crucial chapter in the history of the West.

伊文·S﹒ 康奈尔，1924年生于美国堪萨斯城，曾就读于堪萨斯大学，作家，著有数部脍炙人口的长篇小说。他的著作《布里奇先生》和《布里奇夫人》被誉为1960年至1974年美国民族之书。他的作品曾获得过美国兰南文学奖、美国艺术与文学学院奖和罗伯特基尔希奖，他本入也成为美国第三位获普利策文学奖的提名人。