Marina Maxwell
  • Home
  • MMMusings
  • Blogs
  • About Me
  • My Books
  • Book Reviews
  • FAMILY TALES

Reviews

Categories

All


I read and review both historical fiction and non-fiction, but also enjoy biographies, crime and some contemporary fiction.
​ 

Please note that unless stated that I have received these books directly from the publisher or author in exchange for an honest review, I either purchase my own copies or source them from my local library service. 

​Links to Amazon, Book Depository or Dymocks Australia are only for the reader's reference.
(Due to some poor experiences recently with Booktopia, from 2023 I will no longer link to them.)

My reviews for Historical Novels Review, the magazine of the Historical Novel Society, can be found online here
​

A Splendid Savage

2/2/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
Very few individuals have led lives so remarkable that they are beyond anything a novelist might invent: Frederick Russell Burnham being one of them.
 
During the 1862 Dakota War, a mother hides her baby in a basket in a corn field to keep him safe from marauding Sioux. They burn down the family home but don’t find the sleeping Fred. This fortuitous start in life sets the tone for this monumental biography, nearly every chapter of which could inspire a movie or TV adventure series.
 
As a teenager living on his wits in California and Arizona, Burnham hooks up with famous scouts who pass on their tracking and survival skills. He runs messages, rides shotgun, hunts down Apaches, mines and transports silver or generally rubs shoulders with infamous gang members and lawmen alike in towns like Tombstone.
 
As the West is subdued and civilized, he seeks fresh horizons. With wife Blanche and son Roderick in tow, he embarks on some of his greatest derring-do in Southern Africa. His daughter Nada is the first white child born in Bulawayo and he is one of only three survivors of the Shangani Patrol, the legendary last-stand battle of white men against King Lobengula’s Matabele impis. Later, he is appointed by Lord Roberts as Britain’s Official Scout during the Boer War when again he puts his life on the line as spy and saboteur. His reputation is further enhanced world-wide after his friendship with Lord Baden-Powell inspires the creation of the youth scouting movement. Although an American, he is awarded Britain’s Distinguished Service Order for gallantry by King Edward VII.
 
When not spying or scouting, Burnham is a prospector and investor who suffers interminable booms and busts. Ever hopeful of the lucky strike, he pegs rich copper resources beyond the Zambezi River, gold in Alaska and the Klondike, as well as in the Ashanti kingdoms of West Africa. He discovers other valuable natural resources on the plains of East Africa. In Mexico, he again has to juggle business interests with politics and just happens to be in the right place at the right time to save the American and Mexican Presidents from an assassination attempt.
 
He is well into middle age when he finally hits pay-dirt with oil in familiar California territory he rode across as a child. At last he is financially secure and, like his friend Teddy Roosevelt, Burnham turns from hunter to conservationist, establishing early wild-life protection bodies.
 
One of the more bizarre episodes is Burnham’s dream of populating the rivers and plains of America with African wildlife, including hippos and giraffes, in order to provide hunting opportunities as well as food for the nation. In this crazy but ill-fated enterprise, he is joined by a notorious conman and German spy, a former Afrikaner scout who was his opposite during the Boer War when the two men had contracts out on each other. (As of writing this, apparently there are plans to make a movie about this venture starring Edward Norton.) 
 
In a down-to-earth style that befits his subject, Steve Kemper gives us a meticulous investigation of Burnham’s life and times, including his relationships with the exalted and the humble, also his family. His spirited wife Blanche (who really deserves a biography of her own) endures hardships and tragedies that would crush most other women yet she remains Burnham’s loyal soulmate for nearly sixty years.
 
For those interested in the history of the Matabele Wars, in the Appendices the author takes a good hard look at the evidence both for and against the accusations of cowardice and lies in regard to Burnham’s participation in the Shangani Patrol and his assassination of the Matabele prophet, the M’limo, in a cave near Bulawayo.
 
Although some of Burnham’s attitudes may not sit easily with modern readers, he was an exemplar of his age and must not be judged from a 21st Century perspective. Yet he also had a surprisingly romantic side as evidenced in some of his letters to Blanche and his other musings are still interesting either for their prescience or reflective nature.

Capable of unbridled optimism and almost superhuman physical resilience, Burnham remains a contradictory but ever-magnetic figure. Congratulations to Steve Kemper for giving him the superb biography he deserves.

Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

Booktopia


0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Categories

    All

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    October 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    October 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015

    See
    Historical Novel Society
    ​
    for my reviews of historical fiction
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • MMMusings
  • Blogs
  • About Me
  • My Books
  • Book Reviews
  • FAMILY TALES