Days Without End by Sebastian Barry

 

If Maryland ain't pretty country God's a girl. [151]

Amazing Barry streak continues. This is in America, mid 19th century, Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia, Maryland, Missouri, points west toward Montana. 

Two gay soldiers raise a Native American girl they orphaned. One cross dresses for their years in vaudevill.

They fight in the Indian Wars and in the Civil War. They farm and travel. Everything about Barry's prose style continues to delight, confound, and elude me - how does he do it? Echoes of Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy and maybe Melville. Can be arduous for short periods, but his characters and journey-plot always come back to save one.