BiblioVault - Books about Historical

York's Ride

A Novel of Old California

Michael Dennis Cassity

University of Nevada Press, 2025

In 1914, most of the world is focused on The Great War, but a much quieter story is taking place in a remote mountain region in northern California and western Nevada with the tale of two twelve-year-old boys and a legendary, wild horse from the desert. The stallion, Meshuga—part mustang and part giant Percheron draft —is a stallion so strong that he becomes a mythical, inspirational fable. Meshuga is destined to compete in a long-distance race through the mountains and valleys against the nation’s best Arabian horses.

Jim, an orphan, has moved to the West to live on his Uncle Martin and Aunt Hanna’s ranch in the small, post-Gold Rush town of Taylorsville where the Sierra Nevada meets the Cascades. Mostly, Jim doesn’t miss his family farm in Missouri, and when he’s not doing ranch chores, he spends his time fly-fishing on nearby Indian Creek. This is where he first encounters York, a local boy from the Maidu tribe, and the two become fast friends. Jim and York soon meet up with Blind Charlie, a famous Maidu elder storyteller, who fills their heads with ancestral myths and legends.

After the untimely death of York, Meshuga’s caretaker, Jim is suddenly moved to take responsibility for the great black mustang and become part of Blind Charlie’s prophecies. With York gone, Jim must fulfill what his friend knew all along—that he and Meshuga would learn to conquer the challenge of the race of the century. A romantic novel of the Old West imbued with rich historical details, York’s Ride is a complex and beautiful tale about family relationships and coming-of-age in early twentieth-century California.

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You Can Cross the Massacre on Foot

Freddy Prestol Castillo

Duke University Press, 2019

In 1937 tens of thousands of Haitians living in the Dominican Republic were slaughtered by Dominican troops wielding machetes and knives. Dominican writer and lawyer Freddy Prestol Castillo worked on the Haiti-Dominican Republic border during the massacre, known as “The Cutting,” and documented the atrocities in real time in You Can Cross the Massacre on Foot. Written in 1937, published in Spanish in 1973, and appearing here in English for the first time, Prestol Castillo's novel is one of the few works that details the massacre's scale and scope. Conveying the horror of witnessing such inhumane violence firsthand, it is both an attempt to come to terms with personal and collective guilt and a search to understand how people can be driven to indiscriminately kill their neighbors.

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Your Death Would Be Mine

Paul and Marie Pireaud in the Great War

Martha Hanna

Harvard University Press, 2006

Paul and Marie Pireaud, a young peasant couple from southwest France, were newlyweds when World War I erupted. With Paul in the army from 1914 through 1919, they were forced to conduct their marriage mostly by correspondence. Drawing upon the hundreds of letters they wrote, Martha Hanna tells their moving story and reveals a powerful and personal perspective on war.

Civilians and combatants alike maintained bonds of emotional commitment and suffered the inevitable miseries of extended absence. While under direct fire at Verdun, Paul wrote with equal intensity and poetic clarity of the brutality of battle and the dietary needs (as he understood them) of his pregnant wife. Marie, in turn, described the difficulties of working the family farm and caring for a sick infant, lamented the deaths of local men, and longed for the safe return of her husband. Through intimate avowals and careful observations, their letters reveal how war transformed their lives, reinforced their love, and permanently altered the character of rural France.

Overwhelmed by one of the most tumultuous upheavals of the modern age, Paul and Marie found solace in family and strength in passion. Theirs is a human story of loneliness and longing, fear in the face of death, and the consolations of love. Your Death Would Be Mine is a poignant tale of ordinary people coping with the trauma of war.

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Yours

The Civil War, a Love Triangle, and the Steamboat Sultana

Lila Jeanne Elliott Sybesma

Indiana Historical Society Press, 2019

Sarah Sutton and the Elliott brothers, Gabe and Joseph, grew up together, and, as teenagers, the brothers vie for Sarah's attention. When the Civil War starts, Gabe and Joseph enlist in the Union army. Sarah accompanies her father, a surgeon, and serves as a nurse in battlefield hospitals. They reunite on the Sultana, a steamboat returning thousands of soldiers, many former prisoners of war, home. Tragedy strikes when the boilers explode and the ship sinks in the Mississippi River. What will happen next?

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A Youth in the Meuse-Argonne

A Memoir, 1917-1918

William S. Triplet, Edited & Intro by Robert H. Ferrell

University of Missouri Press, 2000

A Youth in the Meuse-Argonne is a firsthand account of World War I through the eyes of an enlisted soldier. William S. Triplet was a seventeen-year-old junior in high school when, on April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asked for a declaration of war. Passed by Congress and signed by the nation's chief executive four days later, this declaration stirred the superintendent of schools in Triplet's hometown of Sedalia, Missouri, to make an emotional plea to all eligible students to join the armed forces. "Any student who felt called upon to fight, bleed, and die for his country could receive his graduation diploma upon his return from the war." Triplet was eighteen months short of being of legal enlistment age, but the army didn't check birth certificates. The appeal of military benefits—room and board, travel, adventure, and fifteen dollars a month, plus knowing he would receive his high school diploma—was too much for the young Triplet to pass up. Thus began William S. Triplet's remarkable career in the U.S. Army, in which he served until his retirement as a full colonel in 1954.

In A Youth in the Meuse-Argonne, Triplet covers the early years of his service in Company D, 140th Infantry Regiment, 35th Division, from shortly after the time of his enlistment in 1917 to his honorable discharge in 1919. During those months he participated in several actions, most notably the battle of the Meuse-Argonne. With both elegance and a touch of humor, he masterfully portrays the everyday life of the soldier, humanizing the men with whom he served. His vivid depictions of how soldiers fought give the reader a much clearer view of the terrifying experiences of combat. He also touches on the special problems he encountered as a sergeant with an infantry platoon composed of soldiers from many different walks of life.

In writing this memoir, Triplet relied heavily on a detailed diary that he kept while he was in France in 1918. Through his annotations, Robert H. Ferrell provides the historical context for Triplet's firsthand experiences. The result is a compelling memoir that offers insight into the lives of the soldiers who served during World War I. Anyone with an interest in World War I or military history in general will find A Youth in the Meuse-Argonne of great interest.

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