I read this book because I really enjoyed "The Terror" by the same author. Both books have a lot in common: historical fiction with a supernatural edge to it, very interesting settings, great characters, and (mini-spoiler) a very weird turn near the end.

Basically, it's the story of a Lakota boy named Paha Sapa (which means "Black Hills" in Lakota) who witnesses the steady decline of his people and his homeland from the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876 to the dedication of Mount Rushmore almost exactly 60 years later. As a child, he was the step-grandson and apprentice of a respected holy man, a friend of Sitting Bull and distant relative of Crazy Horse. In old age, he becomes a worker on the Mount Rushmore construction project, helping carve his conquerors' faces into the side of a sacred mountain. In between, he deals with ghosts (literal and figurative), failures, and tragedy, all while plotting his revenge against what he basically considers the world's largest piece of graffiti.

My only minor complaint is that Simmons sometimes tries a little too hard to show off all the historical research that obviously went into the book. Characters sometimes can, for instance, recite the exact dimensions of the Brooklyn Bridge off the top of their heads, or quote entire paragraphs of random newspaper articles they read years earlier. Overall, though, it was not as good as The Terror but still definitely worth reading.