Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen

I loved Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen!! Why? I listened to the audio version and many a time sat on my driveway, totally engrossed, not being able to get out of the car till the end of the chapter! This book is a gripping account about a turbulent period of American history. Kathy Williams is a little known but brave and heroic character. Kudos to Sarah Bird for bringing this story to life and raising some important questions of our segregated past. She writes with integrity, drama, and wit. I recommend this historic novel. It was a great read in our book club. By the way, I heard someone say a white writer shouldn’t write about a black story! Oh really! Writers write stories about subjects that appeal to them for whatever reason. Writers write! Whoever thought of black writers only writing about black characters and white writers only writing about white characters!

I enjoyed the book especially due to descriptions of the time period, the Civil War and after. The characters seem to be driven by the need to survive slavery, the Civil War and life in general. Every character strives to get to the next point, which interesting, gets to be tedious after so many calamities befall them. The lead character, Cathy Williams was a real life person at this time, so I appreciated learning about her. But her real life was not as exciting or not very well documented.I admire reading about women that have been role models for the rest of us. It is much romanticized so not for everyone, especially with an inordinate amount of challenges that may or may not have happened. Just overcoming slavery and helping the Union Army was very dramatic and interesting to me. She must have been quite a women.

This book was a tremendous read exploring the life of a real black woman - Cathy Williams- who enlisted in the U.S. army immediately after the Civil War and camouflaged her real identity while training/working in a black cavalry unit stationed in New Mexico to help "fight" the Native American tribes. Sarah Bird's research and writing of the life experience and trials that African Americans faced in the aftermath of reconstruction and the tremendous prejudice that they faced at that time makes for an eye-opening view of this historical period. The issues then unfortunately still exist in some manner today which makes it a really great book for discussion. It is truly a thought provoking book in the historical sense but Bird has also woven a wonderful story of the characters and their relationships (and romance!) during the time they spent in the cavalry unit. Truly at great book and a highly recommended read!!

Sarah Bird tells a compelling Civil War story that hadn't received much previous acknowledgment. Spanning the end of the Civil War to post-war years, this is the improbable-but-true tale of a young slave woman, who successfully poses as a man to escape starvation and death on a burned-out plantation, first, as an untrained cook to Union Gen. "Little Phil" Sheridan, and then, after the war, as an enlisted cavalry solider in an all-black company. Bird is lyrical in her telling, deftly describing the landscape and hardscrabble existence in the war's waning days, and fleshing out characters that spring to life through her vivid details. It's also a story of the inbred racism that fueled the war and burned long after Lee's surrender. In a pointed observation, Bird notes that the defeated Southerners blamed the slaves for its historical context and lovely writing.

The book starts off as a compelling, well crafted exciting story that bogs down as it moves from the South to the West. The time spent in life as a female Buffalo soldier took a regrettable back seat to an invented romance novel and one dimensional villains. The author used period dialects well that added to the sense of time and place.

We were blessed to have Sarah Bird join our book club meeting for the discussion of this beautiful book. As a Black woman, I’m very sensitive about creatives outside of our culture telling our stories with authenticity and respect.Sarah Bird shared her fascinating military family background and love of photographing Texas rodeos. She expressed her vulnerability in our era of cultural appropriation and successfully avoided those pitfalls.I bounced between reading and listening to Bahni Turner’s perfect casting for the audiobook.For those critiquing the dialect, do your research. My intelligent, witty great-grandmother could swing back and forth from proper English to our relaxed, country dialect.For those looking for a biography, this is historical fiction. That’s blend of fact and fiction.Storytelling is an important part of American culture and I’m proud to see Black women finally be a part of the narrative and in the mainstream!

I really enjoyed this book - couldn’t put it down. It held me captive right until the end but the end left me wondering what really happened. I did not feel a sense of closure, which was disappointing. The story did prompt me to learn more about the Black Seminoles.

I was totally immersed in this book. I knew of the Buffalo Soldiers, but not much and certainly did not know that a woman dressed as a man and served for years in the Cavalry. I walked with the infantry, rode with the cavalry and suffered their hardships. When an author can get me so emotionally involved in a novel, that makes it a good book for me. The descriptive text made me see the surroundings vividly and as the story unfolded I tried to read more and more, wanting to get to the conclusion. Now that I have finished it I am emotionally exhausted! The only thing I wish is that the author said where the portrait of Cathy William is hanging and I would like to know her sources for the factual information on her. I know there is little though. So, congratulations to this extremely talented author who wrote a riveting novel.