Six top books with sympathetic characters in dangerous settings

Alan Gurganus's books include White People, Oldest Confederate Widow Tells All, and the novella Decoy.

At The Week magazine he tagged his six favorite books with sympathetic characters in dangerous settings, including:

Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn by Evan S. Connell

This chronicle proves how a superb American novelist — in this case the author of Mrs. Bridge and Mr. Bridge — can write a great work of American history. Connell made sense of the insanity of the Battle of Little Big Horn and anatomized the psychopathology of Gen. George Armstrong Custer. Son of the Morning Star shows how the military mind and the criminal mind too often too perfectly intersect.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Son of the Morning Star is among Mark J. Miller's five top books on the wild west.

--Marshal Zeringue