Days Without End

A Novel

By: Sebastian Barry

Narrated by: Aidan Kelly

From Sebastian Barry, a two-time finalist for the Man Booker Prize, comes a powerful and unforgettable novel chronicling a young Irish immigrant's army years in the Indian wars and the American Civil War.

Thomas McNulty, having fled the Great Famine in Ireland and now barely 17 years old, signs up for the US Army in the 1850s and with his brother in arms, John Cole, goes to fight in the Indian Wars - against the Sioux and the Yurok - and, ultimately, in the Civil War. Orphans of terrible hardships themselves, they find these days to be vivid and alive, despite the horrors they see and are complicit in.

Moving from the plains of Wyoming to Tennessee, Sebastian Barry's latest work is a masterpiece of atmosphere and language. An intensely poignant story of two men and the makeshift family they create with a young Sioux girl, Winona, Days Without End is a fresh and haunting portrait of the most fateful years in American history and is a novel never to be forgotten.

©2017 Sebastian Barry (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"If an audiobook that is gorgeously written, tells a heart-thumping story, and is performed with flawless taste and authority is a cause for celebration, chill the champagne.... If the setting sounds familiar, the story is not, and you will not soon forget it, thanks to dazzling language and to a supple and powerful performance by [narrator Aidan] Kelly, whose Thomas is somehow both pragmatic and full of wonder." ( AudioFile)

Remarkable story

If this story were about two women in the same time period and cultural context, I might not bother to finish it, let alone write a review. But this book is remarkable in every sense. Straightforward, humble first-person narrative, perfectly delivered, perfectly believable. No melodrama or subliminal "message." A story I would not previously have stopped to consider. Truly an eye-opener, and proof there's still more to learn about what love means.

Lyrical Tale of Abiding Love Amid Carnage

Sebastian Barry has written a gorgeous masterwork of love and war. Starving Irish immigrant Thomas McNulty and “skinny as a pencil” John Cole travel the West first as dance hall “girls” then as soldiers in the Indian Wars and the Civil War. Days Without End shows the racist ugliness of the Indian Wars and the brutality of the Civil War. The heart of the beautifully written tale, however, is the power of love between McNulty and Cole and the home they make for a Native American girl orphaned by the slaughter of her family. Barry’s power as a storyteller bring the frontier to life with a lyrical beauty rare in contemporary novels.

So....ummmm....yeah------it's NOT just about 2 men

So hopefully this will get out there and un-do some of the damage of the the review left by the guy in "Canyon Country".
It's a great bit of History. It's a well-performed narration. The flaws if they are to be found lie in the truncated prose which begins to soar at times only to stem its own sense movement. Does the story involve two men who are in a relationship? Yes. Does that same simplistic viewpoint also have merit when one reviews any story in which a man and a woman are involved and dismisses or diminishes the piece? If that were the case then I would have to say that roughly 99,9% of all literary endeavours EVER are just about a man and a woman so maybe take that as an invalid motivation for choosing to read something..
As a sidenote to the guy in "Canyon Country": You're a tool.

Unusual and extraordinary

The premise of this book is that two gay men living in the 1850s to the 1870s served on the union side in the Civil War. It is an extraordinary twist on a civil war story. It is beautifully, poetically written and extraordinary in its commentary on life both then and now of not just gay men but all who serve. I highly recommend it.

excellent.

Great read. Especially for those who enjoy American History. One of those books that is hard to put down.