A book designed to stir emotions. Altough fictional, it portrays many of the actions and reactions of the eras. The violence towards those people who would live in peace if allowed and the confusion that carried the day gives readers a small look at the temperature of a nation that would allow Custer to wage war during The Battle of Big Horn. Custer's view of the Indigenous people and Little Wolf's view of the government officials who refused to recoginize them as Americans builds a landscape that was sure to be painted in blood.

After a century, we expect to see a community that has learned from the mistakes of their forbearers only to see Nancy Swiftfox struggling to raise her sons in an era where prejudice still runs strong. The community of their lives is still failing to protect and provide for it's youth. Strong emotions rule the day.

ALL I SEE IS VIOLENCE is an unsettling voice in a world where most people would rather not see that so little has changed but refuse to take action to insure the violence ends.

This book sits with you. While a lot of non fiction has been written about Little Big Horn, this humanized the saga from the history books and made you understand both the history of who it happened and the implications of how it reverberates through present day. The book was stark and unflinching but powerful.

This book devastated me in the best way - the kind of way that had me crying at the end but wanted to ring up everything reader friend I have and force them to read this book. The book is so powerfully written, it resonates like a bell. As I look over my notes, I'm trying to piece together in a coherent way what it was exactly about this book that struck such a chord, what emotions it triggered, that makes me stare at the wall and just think over and over about what I just read.
To begin, the mechanics of the book were so expertly done. We have the three different POVs - Nancy (1970s), Little Wolf (1870s), and General Custer (1870s) - and they are all written in the first person. At first, I struggled a little with slipping seamlessly from each, but as the book moves forward, each voice is distinctive and powerful that split easily. Although, I believe Little Wolf's story/POV to be the most powerful and gripping. Nancy is a single mother, living on the reservation, with her children, her oldest child survived the Vietnam War, but lost his arm. Their father is in prison. As we switch from the Sioux Wars to the 1970s, we are exposed to the hate, the systemic dehumanization of the indigenous peoples. Little Wolf is struggling with the traumtic loss of her family while finding love with Swift Fox, and it is her ancestors we see a century later struggling with the trauma and struggle of reservation life through Nancy.
At first, I didn't see the point of Custer's POV - he was cocky, arrogant, and unlikable. But as we progress, as the book careens towards the Battle of Little Bighorn/ Battle of Greasy Grass, as his inevitable death approaches, his POV becomes clearer. At times it seems Custer is on the cusp of understanding the wrongness, understanding the the indigenous Sioux and Cheyenne he fights against are humans, are fighting not just for land (in the American sense) but in their heritage, their god, their place, their soul. He hovers there at this cusp, but never reaches it. Just like so many others that follow him, never understanding, not truly, the pain and devastation that have slipped into the indigenous way of life generationally. This battle is the crux for so much that follows after - the desperation and indignity of reservations, the pain, all the way up to Wounded Knee.
This book was so powerful. From the start, we know the ending will be hard. But even as we know this, it is impossible to put the book down. We confront the violence with the beautiful emotions of life, the love of our partners, our children, the hope for the next, and how these continue even through the perils of conflict and struggle. This only makes the ending more impactful - how beauty and violence so often go hand in hand. The love between Little Wolf and Swift Fox is beautiful, hopefully, strong, in a way that makes the reader so desperately want a different ending than the one we know is coming. This book was stunning, beautifully and emotionally written, powerful and evocative. This book will live with me for a long, long time.

I wanted to read this story because I strongly believe, that while fictional, it sheds light on the real stories from history that need to be told. As a Canadian I have read many stories more specific to the indigenous people who's lands are around me, and I was extending my learning further. After reading I still believe those things to be true.

While challenging to read at times, as it should be, I think the story was well crafted overall. I think my limited understanding of some of the history going in to the book might have impacted it for me, but nothing that a break to Google some things couldn't fix.

Overall I enjoyed the multiple points of view, but did find it a bit tricky to follow at times. As some other people have said, it would have been helpful to have some sort of heading to the chapter to know which character's POV we would be reading.

This was not for me. The writing was terrible and I couldn’t stay in the story due to that. The flipping around did not work well.

Thank you to Net Galley and Greenleaf for the eARC of All I See is Violence in exchange for an honest review!

This had all the trappings of a book I would love, but unfortunately it did not work for me. I have many questions about how this book was organized and about why Custer was chosen as a third POV, and I personally felt the writing style was often stilted and awkward. I think this book could have benefitted from only 2 POVs (or, if each pov was necessary, putting it all in third-person to help create distinctions between characters) and for each chapter to have labeled headings for clearer organization. And I’m not usually a person that asks for longer chapters, but it often felt like whiplash going between POVs, by the time I got in the groove with one timeline I’d be pushed into another. I would be curious to know how an own-voices Indigenous reviewer felt about the Custer POV, but I personally found it to be unnecessary to the point that it made the themes of generational connection and the power of women weaker.
I do think, despite some of the things I’ve outlined above, the themes here were very clear, creating strong links between the “present” (though I guess, also the past in 1972) and the past, how both trauma and resistance persist in the face of colonial violence. I enjoyed the setting of Nancy’s POV during 1972 when the American Indian Movement was at its height, I feel like that’s an often overlooked period of US history that deserves a lot more attention.
Ultimately, while this book was not for me, I do think there’s a lot to love here and see a lot of promise for this author.

This took me a while to finish and that was due to the different time line perspectives. Usually, I have no issues following but I wish that each chapter had a time period or a name to refer to. I would get invested and next thing I knew the chapter was over and I was starting a new person. I think that with little tweak it would have been a faster read for me. Overall, an interesting read and well written.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. I do think that at times it was hard to follow. I think two POVs rather than three may have helped with that. To be honest, I wasn’t that interested in Custer’s perspective until maybe the last 1/4 of the book. The endings for Little Wolf and Nancy left me confused, sad, and disappointed. Although, I think that was intentional. I honestly kept assuming Nancy would have one more chapter. The story is sad, and gruesome, and horrific. But it’s also full of spirit. This is a book that I need to sit with for a while and one that I think I’ll keep coming back to in my mind.

Stories of three women throughout time who are impacted by the United States brutal conquest of Sioux land.

I think this is an important story to be told but there was no indication of shift between narrators. This made it really hard to read because there was no indicator for the reader that we had shifted narratives. That took away from the cohesion of the stories for me and just made it harder to grasp.

I knew what I was getting myself into when I started All I See is Violence by Angie Elita Newell. First, the title - pretty self-explanatory. Second, the time period it's discussing is a period in history that most American school children have had some education about. We know how it ends. It ends with the tribes and their ways of life decimated through systematic genocide. We know about Custer and his stand. However, so much of the literature and the story out there is told from the side of the settlers and those that perpetrated the violence. In All I See is Violence, we get the story of Little Wolf and her journey from her perspective, as well as Nancy's journey in the 1970s. Custer's story is also told.

I'm still sitting with this book a day later. There was hope, anguish, despair, love, the whole gamut of emotions. I really loved how the author spoke through Little Wolf and Nancy to show how the actions of the government and the agencies to force the tribes off their land in the 1870s was still impacting their descendants and their families 100 years later. Their stories were intertwined and interconnected across the generations and the centuries, and I thought this was really well done. I did struggle with the inclusion of telling a part of the story from Custer's perspective. There's been so much told about him and his story, I really at first was not sure why the author included him as such a central story teller. I can't speak for the author, but after a day of thinking, I can see how including him was important to show the impact he had on the lives of all those then and now. While he died that day (this isn't a spoiler, this news is over a century old), he and his men played a central role in Little Wolf's development and story line.

There are brief moments of happiness and warmth in this novel. There is power, and strength and resolve. There are moments that made my heart ache deep inside my chest where I had to go back after I finished the novel and re-read to make sure that how I read it was accurate (and to hopefully change the outcome that I read, let's be honest - reader it did not change). This story is so powerful and raw. I really recommend it. It's poignant and tells this widely known story and era from a different perspective. It's a perspective that Custer, his men, the government, would have wanted silenced. They would never have imagined a time when their Manifest Destiny would fail and the descendants of those they tried to eradicate or forcibly assimilate would be able to tell their stories. Again, I think this is a novel that more should read. My only critique was that I wished we had more from Nancy's perspective. I didn't do a 1:1:1 comparison, but it felt that the story very heavily leaned on Little Wolf and Custer, and then Nancy did not get woven in as much as I would have liked for how impactful her story line was on the repercussions of the lives lived so long ago. 5/5 really would recommend even with that critique.

Please be advised I received an Advanced Reader Copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Aptly named.

Following the lives of 3 women in various timelines, as well as General Custer, All I See Is Violence is a historical fiction novel that lays bare a violent chapter in the history of the Sioux peoples, and of Indigenous history in North America/Turtle Island.

Broken treaties, dehumanization, forced displacement and brutal violence features prominently in this novel - past and present. The impact of the multiple narrators really drives home the point that those same attitudes didn’t fade away with new legislation.

I found it really shocking to read how bluntly the dialogue was written in regards to the blatant racism and intent of genocide. The novel forces you to reconcile that feeling with the knowledge that many of these disgusting comments are actually historically accurate. It’s shocking, and yes it’s fiction, but only slightly. It’s not a radical re-telling of history, it’s a humanizing novel to counter the Eurocentric histories that we have internalized even today.

All I See Is Violence is a beautiful story about motherhood, strength, power, and intergenerational pain. It’s blunt and brutal and full of love all at the same time.

There is so much power in this novel, and it will read so differently depending on your own positioning. For me, it boldly challenges the idea of “that’s just how things were done back then.” Violence was wrong then, just as it is wrong now. We look back and pretend as if people were unaware. It takes clear intention to cause the harm that Indigenous communities are still healing today. We knew better then, and we know better now.

I was very interested to read this book, particularly because of my own unique background dealing with the effects of colonization and stolen land, but the situation in Hawaii and Puerto Rico are so different from what happened to the indigenous Americans. The violence shown to indigenous Americans, and particularly women, has been a constant throughout these decades.

The narrative structure was interesting, switching between the three point of views at random. My favorite point of view was that of Little Wolf. Her view of the world captured my attention, and I wanted to read more. The prose utilized by the author to describe Little Wolf’s connection to nature and her culture was enchanting. I not only felt like I was learning, but like I was experiencing it through her. The first person point of view helped with that.

However, the only thing I really didn’t enjoy about this book was Custer’s point of view. If I’m being honest, I didn’t understand the purpose of including him. He didn’t really fit the theme since he, unlike Nancy and little wolf, was a white man. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me, considering the white man’s point of view is pretty much all we have gotten through history, something the author points out within the book. Perhaps I’m missing something about his purpose but I hope in the final product it will be more clear. Personally, I dragged my feet during his chapters, I just didn’t find them very engaging. I honestly believe that if his point of view was taken out completely and instead filled with more chapters from Nancy, the book would have a tighter and more cohesive theme. Speaking of Nancy, I really wish we had seen more of her story and her relationship with all of her sons.

The ending of the novel was what really solidified this book as 4 stars for me. It perfectly tied the stories together with the theme of violence that permeates the novel. I know the last line will sit with me for some time, it was so striking.

Overall this was a captivating read, the last star is because of Custer’s point of view, which made my enjoyment of the novel go down significantly because it brought me out of the world.

“Sha softly whispers to me, her hand on the side of my head. “I have always wished for a time, before they came, when the earth, she gave us everything we needed. When we gave our people everything they could want. I wished we could stay in the Black Hills and hear the wind call the trees and the trees answer with their song. And the magic of wasun called to us undisturbed.”

One note about this book: I wish the chapters opened with the name of whomever’s POV we were given because yes, eventually I could figure out whose chapter I was reading based on setting, characters, and context. However, that time/energy I spent wondering whose POV I was reading could have been better spent fully investing and staying present in each chapter.

You get three first-person, present-tense POVs in this book:
-General Custer
-Little Wolf (who is in the same time as General Custer, which is 1876 before the Battle of Little Bighorn aka Custer’s Last Stand)
-Nancy, who is a descendant of Little Wolf in 1976

It is extremely difficult for me to get fully invested in plots that follow war/battles, so I was most invested in Nancy’s chapters. I actually would have loved a bit more time with her, her dad, her sons, and Joshua. I felt like I got to know Nancy but I would have appreciated more depth and growth from her sons especially.

Little Wolf and General Custer’s chapters were interesting, but I found myself least interested in General Custer’s POV-color me shocked lol. I don’t want to give any spoilers away but overall, this book ripped my heart out. The title is appropriate and yall should take care while reading.

I love the author’s bio so I’m copying & pasting it here:
ANGIE ELITA NEWELL belongs to the Liidlii Kue First Nations from the Dehcho, the place where two rivers meet. Trained as a historian and holding degrees in English literature, creative writing, and history, a mother to daughters as they wander the world, always listening to stories, honoring the ancestors, revering the truth that we are all connected, every plant, being, and creature; the only thing that will ever matter is love.

see content warnings listed below

Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs, Grief, Hate crime, Violence, Racism, Alcohol, Cursing, War, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Suicide, Gun violence, Animal death, Blood, Genocide, Murder, Colonisation, and Death, Rape and Sexual violence

In “All I see is Violence,” Angie Newell divides the book into two narratives - one set in the 1870s, and another a hundred years later. The former is centered largely around Little Wolf, a warrior of the Cheyenne who is swept up in the harsh post-Civil War policies of the US government that sought to break the power of the western indigenous nations and shuttle them onto meager reservations. The latter focuses on Nancy Swiftfox, who while striving hard to balance the stresses of reservation life, raising her several boys (one of who has returned injured after serving in Vietnam), and the challenges that inevitably arise from being a functionally single mother and a native woman in 1970’s America, finds herself caught up in the American Indian Movement.

Each plot could have stood separately, and in my opinion quite successfully on its own as an illustration of a particular form of violence wrought upon the nation’s indigenous peoples at different points in the US’s stained history. However by intertwining them together, Newell very effectively tells a larger, stronger, and more important story on several levels. First, it's a grander story that that highlights the multi-generational trauma that has been wrought upon the original peoples of what is now the United States and the long-lingering effects of systemic injustice. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly. (at least in my opinion) it's a story that highlights the oft-forgotten fact that no matter the era, or the tragic losses that were experienced, indigenous resistance has always been there as well in some fierce shape or form.

Thanks to Greenleaf Book Group Press and NetGalley for allowing me the opportunity to read and review Angie Elita Newell's 'All I See is Violence.'

Wow. I was not expecting this book to be so very powerful.

It's the Native American experience from the 1870s (and beforehand) to the 1970s told through three intertwining and alternating viewpoints - Little Wolf, a woman Cheyenne warrior and General Custer in the 1870s and Nancy Swiftfox, an indigenous woman living on a South Dakota reservation and teaching in a school three hours away, to and from which she drives daily. The 1870s storyline sees the Native people being ordered into the agencies and many of them resisting which culminates - in this novel - with the Battle of Little Bighorn. The narrative structure for that part of the book sees Little Wolf and Custer coming closer and closer - figuratively and literally - to the climatic part of that story, the famous battle that saw Custer and his soldiers wiped out but Little Wolf and her husband, Swift Fox, and their contemporaries know it's a temporary victory and that ultimately they'll be forced onto reservations. In the 1970s at the height of the American Indian Movement, Nancy Swiftfox, a descendent of Little Wolf and Swift Fox, lives with the consequences of the battles and policies of the US government in the 1870s. She's living with the ongoing racism that exists as she tries to raise a family, maintain a relationship with her jailed husband, her disabled Vietnam veteran oldest son, her supportive father-in-law, and her new, white boyfriend.

The writing is beautiful and compelling and the entire story is heartbreaking. You just wish for a time machine to go back and try to have the European world leave these beautiful people alone.

All I See is Violence covers over a century of violence against Native American communities committed by white men and the U.S. government.
Newell writes a very accurate depiction of the battle of Little Bighorn in 1876. Custer and his men forced the native people to leave their homeland. If they did not - they were killed. A woman fights to stop the social eradication of culture and community.
She moves on to the Pine Ridge action which takes place as the Native American Indian movement grows. This fight between them and the government leaves them hurting once more. Another woman fights for socio-economic and cultural justice. It remains a hard fight.

Finally, in current America we meet a woman who is raising four children on her own and fighting an injustice system.

The book is about the many losses of the historical and contemporary Native peoples. It also looks at ways to heal -- which is quite a journey unto itself