Days Without End

Days Without End (2016) is a novel by Irish author Sebastian Barry. Days Without End is Barry’s ninth novel and received considerable critical acclaim. The novel won the 2017 Walter Scott Prize, was listed at number 74 on The Guardian’s list of the 100 best books of the 21st century (2019 edition), and made BBC News’s 2019 list of the 100 most influential novels. The novel also won the 2016 Costa Book Award, making Barry the only novelist to ever win the award twice (he first won with his 2008 novel, The Secret Scripture).

This guide refers to the Penguin Books 2016 eBook edition of Days Without End.

Content Warning: This guide discusses several difficult topics that feature in Days Without End, including:

• Violence against children and child death
• Racism (including genocide against Native Americans, anti-Black rhetoric, use of slurs including the n-word, and references to slavery and lynching)
• Anti-gay bias
• Anti-trans bias
• Sexual violence (including rape and a reference to sexual violence against children).

A Note on Terminology: Thomas’s gender identity shifts throughout the novel. In reflection of that, this guide uses he/him pronouns when referring to such portions of the novel in which Thomas sees himself as a man and switches to she/her pronouns after she concretely states herself to be a woman. Additionally, due to this shifting understanding of gender identity, the relationship between John and Thomas is referred to using the term “queer,” reflecting Barry’s deployment of the term in his novel (See: Symbols & Motifs: Invocation of “Queer”) and to avoid erasing either of Thomas’s gender identities by using the terms “gay” or “straight.”

Plot Summary

Days Without End is told from the point of view of Thomas McNulty, who tells the story of his life from the perspective of his older self. Thomas begins the narration when he is approximately 17 years old (though he confesses to not knowing his exact age) when he meets John Cole in St. Louis. Both boys are alone in the world—Thomas has lost his family to the Irish famine, while John, who has an unknown degree of Native American heritage, has left behind his father in New England—and they decide to stick together. They soon fall in love. They spend two pleasant years dressing up as women in a saloon—as there are no women in town—where they dance with the miners. Donning women’s clothing awakens a sense of rightness in Thomas, which begins a shifting of gender identity and expression that changes how he sees himself throughout the novel.

When John and Thomas grow too old and masculine in appearance to be read as women, they lose their positions at Noone’s saloon and join the army, where they fight in the American Indian Wars. They spend several years in the army, during which they cross the United States to California and back, and travel around the Great Plains. Most of their time, however, is spent at Fort Laramie. They serve under a man named Major Neale, who attempts to maintain just practices in the war with various Native American groups, and Sergeant Wellington, who is virulently racist. Their first experience in combat is in California where the soldiers are sent to massacre a Yurok village—an action for which they are celebrated by local townsfolk. Weather concerns necessitate the soldiers beginning the journey back east before winter ends, leading the men to nearly starve to death on the Great Plains. They are given food by an Oglala Sioux chief, whom they later learn is named Caught-His-Horse-First.

A large assembly of various Native American tribe representatives meets to discuss a treaty that will allow American emigres headed west to travel undisturbed through Native lands. Though the treaty initially seems successful, conflict breaks out when Caught-His-Horse-First kills emigres who are passing through disallowed land. While searching for the Oglala group responsible for the emigres’s deaths, a group of 20 soldiers are murdered—only a single man, Caleb Booth, survives. The soldiers seek retribution for the soldiers’s murder and kill an entire Oglala village except for the children, whom they take back to Fort Laramie to be educated by Major’s wife, Mrs. Neale. Caught-His-Horse-First is not at camp during the attack, though his wife and all but one of his daughters are killed. When he attempts to barter for the daughter’s release, a soldier named Starling Carlton attacks Caught-His-Horse-First and a sharpshooter named Lige Magan fires at Caught-His-Horse-First, killing his daughter.

John and Thomas’s tour ends and, since John is frequently ill due to an environmental element near Laramie, they leave the army, taking with them a young Sioux girl, whom they call Winona and adopt as a daughter. They journey to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where they join a minstrel troupe owned by Noone, who employed them at the saloon. Thomas enjoys performing in the troupe, as it allows him to dress as a woman for an act in which he and John can showcase their love by making it a performance. Soon after, the Civil War breaks out and, prompted by Beulah McSweny, a free Black man whom they have befriended in Michigan, John and Thomas join the Union army. They serve under Major Neale alongside Starling and Lige. In a battle, Lige is injured and sent home to Tennessee. Shortly before they are set to end their service, John and Thomas are taken prisoner, where they survive a brutal winter in a Confederate prisoner camp before being exchanged for Confederate prisoners of war and sent home to Michigan.

Once they have recovered, they receive a message from Lige asking them to come to Tennessee; because he fought for the Union during the war, he is unable to secure local help for tending his tobacco crop. Thomas, John, and Winona head south, and for part of the journey Thomas wears women’s clothes full-time. They reach Tennessee and live with Lige, his partner (a Black woman named Rosalee), and Rosalee’s brother. Several years later Starling comes to the farm with the news that Major Neale’s wife and daughters have been kidnapped by Caught-His-Horse-First. Mrs. Neale and one daughter have already been killed, but Caught-His-Horse-First offers to trade the remaining daughter for Winona, who, unbeknownst to John and Thomas, is his niece. John refuses, but Winona leaves with Starling during the night. John cannot follow due to a recent injury, so Thomas chases after them.

Thomas meets up with Winona and Starling at Laramie. Major Neale offers Thomas a short commission so he can stay on base for the duration of the exchange (which Winona wishes to see through), promising to rescind his enlistment after the incident is completed. Winona returns to the Sioux without incident, but Major, bereft and grieving his loss, takes the company to kill everyone in the Sioux village. Thomas only cares about escaping with Winona, but Starling, who is highly loyal to Major, insists that Winona be killed. Thomas kills Starling. An officer arrests Major for the order to massacre a village and Thomas, dressed as a woman escapes Laramie with Winona. As they head back to Tennessee, Thomas decides she identifies as a woman.

When they get back to Tennessee, all seems well until two officers come looking for Thomas, who has been listed as a deserter as Major forgot to rescind her commission. As she is presenting full-time in women’s clothing at this point, John introduces her as “Mrs. Cole” and says that Thomas McNulty is dead. One of the officers recognizes her, however, and insists she turn herself in unless she also wants John and Winona to become outlaws for protecting her. Thomas does so with reluctance and faces a court martial for desertion and killing Starling. Major intervenes and just before Thomas is set to be executed, her sentence is commuted to 100 days hard labor. The novel ends at the conclusion of Thomas’s sentence as she heads home to Tennessee, excited to see John and Winona again.