Days Without End By Sebastian Barry

 

Days Without End

By Sebastian Barry

This was a far different story than I was expecting, with a queer twist not noted on the back cover. A pleasant surprise.

Thomas McNulty and John Cole meet when they are very young, both free from a structured home life for their own reasons. The two are brought into the fold of a showman who dresses them as girls to dancw with miners, sonce there are no women around. Thomas takes a liking to dressing as a woman.

They become inseparable and when Thomas is seventeen the two are enlisted into the army to help fight the Indian Wars against the Sioux and Yurok tribes. During one of these battles (exterminations) they save a young Sioux girl from being killed and name her Wynona. 

They bring her up as their own, until they join the union in the Civil War, when they leave her with a friend to fight in it. During the war they get captured and spend a lot of time as prisoners of war. When they are traded for Rebel soldiers they make their way home to Wynona. The three make their way to Tennessee to live and work on a farm owned by a friend form the war. There, they make a life together until someone comes knocking for Wynona, to bring her back to her tribe as a trade for a Colonel's daughter who was kidnapped by the Sioux. With John laid up, Thomas vows to bring her back. Which he does, saving her life in the process, but deserting as a conscripted member of the army as well as killing a fellow soldier to do it. The army follows them on their way back home to bring Thomas to justice.

The only thing throwing me off from giving this book 5 stars was the colloquial first person narration, which took some time to get used to and made me stumble a bit through the book. Otherwise, the story was beautiful and vivid, and the queer love between John and Thomas was both unexpected and naturally, beautifully rendered. The exploration of Thomas's identity and his feelings about identifying as more of a woman in his nature were surprising, unexpected, and wonderfully handled. His love for John Cole, "his beau", had me falling in love with the story. It was a great take on the masculine/feminine battle some of us go through and I could really identify with Thomas McNulty. The shocking violence he has to take part in mixed with the tender moments of his love and relationship were poignant.

I'm giving Days Without End 4.5 stars.