A Wounded Thing Must Hide

Brilliant, bizarre, but not in any conventional sense a biography A Wounded Thing Must Hide is Jeremy Poolman's first, fiercely original foray into non-fiction. Haunted by the death of his own wife, Karen, the author follows Libbie Custer, the wife of General Custer, through her extraordinary life in search of he knows not what. He vividly recreates key scenes in Libbie's life - meeting the Empress Elizabeth of Austria, Tsar Alexander III and Henry James - and details the glorious, wayward career of the general himself, culminating in the slaughter at Little Big Horn. Through the tangibly real recreation of the historical events that are important to the narrator, the author of Skin gets under the skin, gets to the places other biographies can't reach. Perhaps through exploring a widow's determination to protect her husband's damaged reputation, he can find a way to deal with his own loss. Perhaps by exploring Libby's and Custer's enduring love he can find a form for his own. Here, obliquely, biography bleeds into autobiography.