If nothing else, "Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen" told me a story about a person I have never heard before. Story of Cathy Williams is based on a true story of Cathay Williams, an American woman soldier during the Civil War. Other than that development of the characters were very much predictable: Rebs - bad, Union soldiers - good, main character - a hero. There are no interesting twists, surprises, no reality of a human nature. It is surely no "War and Peace".

Based on the true story of enslaved woman Cathy Williams, Sarah Bird has written an adventure story for women, fraught with danger and laced with romance and humor. The fact that Ms. Williams was the first documented black female who served in the famous Buffalo Soldiers branch of the United States Army is the jumping off point for the novel. We follow her as she relates her story as a contraband cook to General Sheridan, to the surrender at Appomatox, and on to her decision to dress as a man and become a soldier. We learn how she maintains her disguise for two years as her unit marches across the Midwest to Texas, helping settlers battle the Native Americans. We also experience love and friendship through her eyes. This book is impossible to put down but you also can't read it in one gulp-I had to stop several times to just catch my breath....but those last 100 pages! Be sure to pay your bills and grocery shop before you get there because you will brook NO distractions.!

Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen is Cathy's story of the civil war. What makes this story so intriguing is that Cathy is a black, former slave who passes herself off as a man most of her life. It would be interesting to include this in a high school US History class.

Such a strong woman character. We all need to be more like her. Great story with twists and turns.

If you love historical fiction, you will absolutely love this book. It tells the tale of Cathy Williams, who was the only woman documented to have served in the U.S. Army with the Buffalo Soldiers. She hid her identity and served two years before she was found out. She was a real person and she really did this, but the novel is fiction based on her story. Still, it’s a wonderfully fascinating tale of a very courageous and bold woman.

Her grandmother was a queen in Africa, but she was kidnapped and ended up in slavery in the southern U.S. Her daughter and granddaughter (Cathy) were born into slavery. The story begins during the Civil War, when General Philip Sheridan selects Cathy to come along with his entourage and be his cook’s helper. She is forced to leave all that’s left of her family, her mother and little sister. She sees the war end and her people freed, but then they have to find something to do. She was a cook’s helper, so she has skills, but she doesn’t want to be a laundress or a cook, two of the very few jobs that were available to women at the time. She and her friend, Solomon, who was the cook she worked for and who now wants to marry her, decide to go into the Army. Without giving away any spoilers, Cathy ends up enlisting in the Army alone. She is sent west, supposedly to fight Indians. But, the cowardly commander of her post has other ideas for the soldiers.

The story has a lot of very tense moments. She’s a woman living in a very dangerous situation. She’s alone and has few friends and can really trust no one. The work is very hard and the conditions are really bad. Weather is hot and there is no shelter at the fort at first, since it was burned down. She constantly has to struggle to keep her identity hidden. To complicate things, some of the other soldiers bully her all the time. But she has great marksmanship skills and gains their respect eventually, but it doesn’t completely stop the bullying and harassment she has to endure for being “different.” Even though the men don’t know she’s a woman, they sense that she is different somehow.

Her situation is further complicated because she met the man who is now her Sergeant previously, when she was on the wagon being transported to General Sheridan’s camp. He does not recognize her though.

The tale is very complex and intricately woven. I was so absorbed in her story that I didn’t want it to end. I even went on Google to see if there is more information out there about her life. She’s a fascinating historical figure and one that I have never heard about before. It’s sad that our history books don’t tell the stories of people like Cathy Williams. She deserves a place in history. This book should be made into a movie so that her story can be shared more widely.

The book was very well-written and I enjoyed the author’s take on the story. We don’t know all that much about Cathy Williams, but this book gives her interesting life a new audience and hopefully will lead to more research so we can learn more about her. I think this book would be appropriate for history classes since it presents a first-person look at the Civil War, the Buffalo Soldiers, and life on the frontier. It also shows how poorly the black people were treated by just about everyone they encountered in those days. They may have gained freedom, but they were still in a bad situation. The sort of insider’s view that a reader gets in a book like this is invaluable for teaching these lessons. High school students should read this book because it will help them gain a new perspective that they can’t get out of a dry, boring textbook. I highly recommend it.

This wasn't for me. I was very interested in the content but it didn't grab me at all. I got about 100 pages in and decided to abandon it.

Powerful. This is the sort of books that they should read in schools as recommended reading. Human, emotive, touching and very raw. I could see this being a movie very easily because it's that good (in the way that a movie would ruin it likely). From a white, foreign, perspective the American Civil War and the continuing racial tensions have always been so difficult to understand because I grew up in a country where slavery was made illegal hundreds of years ago in a multicultural school where racism was never even considered or seen. I realize that's a privileged thing to say, but this book just illustrated so much of the historical pain behind the current problems that it seems so relevant. I especially liked the beginning where she illustrates that the stereotype of the southern black ex-slave is so strong to make people assume she's a fake and the part where she comforts the dying black soldier. You can see the transition from a certain naivete into a much harder woman just between those two points. A very dynamic read with developed characters. Great history.

This was a mixed bag for me. I enjoyed learning about this historical strong woman. However, the violence was heavy handed. Overall, I'm splitting the difference for three stars.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The author left me wanting more. Other than knowing that Cathy Williams was a real person, I’m ashamed to say I don’t know how historically accurate the balance of this book is. That being said, if only half of the cruelty described in this book actually happened, slavery was one of the most abhorrent parts of our country’s history. The author made Cathy Williams come so alive for me that after I finished the book I spent a couple of hours reading about her. There is nothing better than reading about strong women and she certainly was that.

Cathy Williams was a slave in 19th century Missouri when the Civil War changed her life forever. Torn away from her family and the only way of life she ever knew, Williams disguised herself as a man and joined the army yo fight with the Buffalo Soldiers. Struggling to keep her identity hidden, trying to deal with the graphic horrors of war and never losing sight of her ultimate goal of finding her family, this is a remarkable story based on a real woman. Bird reminds us of all the forgotten women in history, women whose stories should be told, women whose names we should all know