Wednesday, July 01, 2020

June's Books





Ali the camel was drafted into the United States Camel Corps and shipped to Texas in 1856. His adventures in the American desert are told from his point of view. A second shipment of camels arrived in 1857, and the Army hoped that the camels would be more useful in the southwestern desert than horses or mules.
Ali was fond of the Arab camel handler that accompanied them from Egypt. They were under the command of Major Edward Beale, who had a favorite camel, Seid. The outbreak of the Civil War ended the experiment and the expansion of the railroad lessened the need for camels. The camels were sold to mines and circuses, others escaped and were set free. Camels were sighted in the southwest until the late 1920s. Beale’s camel Seid is in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.


Clergyman's Wife by Molly Greeley
Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes
The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
Exiled: memoirs of a camel by Kathleen Karr
Archie Goes Home: a Nero Wolfe mystery by Robert Goldsborough

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