SERGEANT LAMB'S AMERICA

Another of Graves' impressive recreations of history, this time as a representative British soldier sees the War of Independence, Lamb, wild Irishman, involved in a cockfight and drinking bout, finds himself enrolled in the army in '73, and soon thereafter is shipped to Canada. He makes friends among the Indians, he meets the woman he loves and she bears his child, he is sent to Boston to be shipped back, after the defeat. One senses another story to be told, and this is the bleakest of outlines for a story that rings as true, in its fields, as the Claudius titles, with multiplicity of detail of opinions, views, observations, descriptions, as things are seen through the sergeant's eyes. Really straight history, but so told that Lamb's adventures moves along with an authentic feel.