Remember Santiago

by Douglas C. Jones

Book Overview

In 1898, America sends forces to chase the Spaniards out of Cuba and the Western Hemisphere. From the start, the mission is ruled by confusion and disarray as each commander promotes his own idea of how to rout the gutless Spanish from their roost. Although the common soldier experiences great suffering, the American newspapers regale the glorious exploits of Teddy Roosevelt and others.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0812503864
• ISBN13: 9780812503869
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: Tor Books
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 4.2" x 6.7"

Customer Reviews

AN ENJOYABLE READ

I liked this one. This is the first Douglas Jones novel I've tried and I must say it was good. I am not all that into historical novel, but this one was different. The author used an interesting technique and it certainly worked. Recommend this one for a fun read anytime.

More history and less western atmosphere than usual.

This book was certainly a change from most of the other Douglas C. Jones novels I've had the pleasure of reading. The author pays much less attention here to continuing his moving fictional history of Arkansas and the West than he does to revealing the sometimes farcical details of America's 1898 attack on Spanish-controlled Cuba. Even Theodore Roosevelt's famous assault on San Juan Hill, made heroic in newspaper accounts of the time, doesn't sound like such a big deal in Jones' careful recounting. (Seems that the future president didn't actually storm up San Juan Hill, but rather a hillock to one side of that prominence. Black soldiers captured San Juan Hill before the Rough Riders even arrived there.) The author's technique of telling his story through various eyes is generally successful, but he could have dropped the viewpoint of a timid Red Cross nurse in favor of more perspective from Joe Mountain, an Arkansas Osage who is every bit as imposing as his moniker implies. All in all, this novel gives readers a much more complete and interesting look at the Cuban end of the Spanish-American War than does, say, Elmore Leonard's newer but heavily romantic "Cuba Libre." However, I prefer the western atmosphere and characters of other Jones novels, especially "The Search for Temperance Moon" and "This Savage Race."