Author to speak on Carson

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — Who would have thought that a book about Kit Carson and the Navajo campaigns would become a best-seller?

“Neither I nor my editor thought it would sell a lot,” said Hampton Sides, the author of ”Blood and Thunder,” a historical best-seller that appeared on the New York Times best-seller list and was named by Time Magazine as one of the 10 best books of the year.

“We were both pleasantly surprised on how well it has done,” he said.

Sides, 46, will be making his first promotional visit to Gallup since the book was published to speak at the new Rehoboth Church at 7 p.m. Thursday. It’s open to the public. There is no admission fee.

This isn’t, however, his first visit to Gallup.

“I was in Gallup during my early research on the book,” he said in a telephone interview from his home in Santa Fe, where he is working on his next book, which will concentrate on the assassination of Martin Luther King, the search for his killer and the history of Memphis, Tenn., the place where he grew up.

It was about five years ago, on a visit to Canyon De Chelly, that Sides started thinking of writing about the Navajos and “The Long Walk,” the military campaign in the early 1860s that transported thousands of Navajos from their homelands to Fort Sumner for several years before they were allowed to return in 1868.

But as he got more and more into the book and learned more about Carson and his life, the focus of the book changed. “I wanted to learn ‘Who is Kit Carson and what was the nature of this conflict?’” Sides said.

The book has been praised for its balanced view of Carson, as well as Sides’ ability to provide a narrative that brings this segment of Old West history to life better than any other author has been able to do so far.

Ron Polinder, who is helping organize Sides’ visit here, said he was moved by the book.

“It helps us understand the historical complexity of our region, the clash of cultures and world views,” he said.

“One cannot read that book without feeling deeply about the many sad stories that took place on the very ground we walk. It is always good to try and imagine how our ancestors thought and lived,” he said.

Sides is also well-known for the book he wrote just before “Blood and Thunder.” “Ghost Soldiers.” also out in paperback, is a compelling narrative of the Bataan Death March and a rescue in 1945 by the Army to save survivors in a POW camp from execution by their Japanese captors.

That book has sold more than a million copies and has been translated into a dozen foreign languages. It won the 2002 PEN USA award for non-fiction and was the basis of the Miramax film, “The Great Raid.”

Sides said “Blood and Thunder” has been optioned by Steven Spielberg’s Dreamworks and was the subject of a major PHS documentary on “The American Experience.”
Polinder encouraged people in this area to come and hear Sides.

This is a “great opportunity for students and community members alike to sit at the feet of a best-selling author and first-rate historian — that doesn’t happen often in our Gallup community,” he said.

Copies of “Blood and Thunder,” which is now in trade paperback, will be available at Side’s speech and he will do book signing after the talk.