Frances Hunter

blog of the author To the Ends of the Earth

 

Frances Hunter's Journal
September 2006

September 30, 2006: The Last Journey

You can read all about the trip we took researching our book and the last journey taken by Lewis & Clark by going to our trip report.

September 26, 2006: Library Journal

Wow! We got a review in Library Journal. For an independently published book, this is huge! Check it out:

By October 1809, Meriwether Lewis was a man in trouble. A national hero along with friend and co-captain William Clark after his return from the Pacific Expedition in 1806, he should have been well placed for future greatness. But beset by backbiting subordinates and the plotting of Gen. James Wilkinson, he descended into alcoholism, disease, and possibly madness.

Lewis set out in September to journey to Federal City (then the name of Washington, DC) and died mysteriously en route, about 50 miles from Memphis. Learning his friend was in trouble, Will Clark tried to help but came too late. Was Lewis murdered by Wilkinson's agents?

First-time novelist Hunter spins an imaginative tale of what might have happened during the last month of Lewis's life that is authentic in detail and shows both the flaws and the virtues of these legends of American history.

Only one thing bothered this reviewer: Hunter couldn't decide whether Lewis and Clark, supposedly two of the greatest friends in American history, were on a first-name basis. [Note: Their letters reveal they called each other Lewis and Clark, not Merry and Bill. Which we thought was just as well. -- Frances]

This quibble aside, the book is highly recommended for all historical fiction collections. [This first offering from Blind Rabbit Press coincides with the 200th anniversary of Louis and Clark's return to St. Louis. Ed.] Ken St. Andre, Phoenix P.L. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

September 22, 2006: Friends Forever, Ring-Tailed to the End

In a book from 1969, I read a description of a cool, self-possessed cop as "ring-tailed." I haven't been able to find any solid origin for the phrase, but I love it.

In the fur trade, a "ring-tailed roarer" was an imaginary animal that was especially wild and fierce. Later, ring-tailed became a term for mountain men or rough frontier hell-raisers themselves, and eventually seems to have become a general intensifier. For example, Martin Parmer, a Missouri state senator, called himself the "Ring-tailed Painter" (panther) because he liked to drink and fight. He was the first white settler in the Grand River Valley.

When developing Lewis and Clark as characters for our book, we decided that they were, in a word, "ring-tailed." We wanted these brave and resolute heroes to be fully human, and that meant showing Meriwether Lewis as a hell-raiser and William Clark as a man doubtless well acquainted with hard partying before his recent marriage.

Lewis and Clark were gentlemen, but we just bet they were cocky, funny, intense SOBs -- and sometimes ring-tailed tomcats, too. How did such men deal with being heroes? And how did they deal with the end of the applause?

September 13, 2006: Too Many Notes

Recently I happened to tell a friend that I was finishing Master of the Senate, the third volume of Robert A. Caro's massive biography of Lyndon Johnson. I started to tell her about how the last part of the book was a detailed case study about the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and how Johnson masterminded its passage through the Senate against enormously complicated political odds.

Somewhat to my surprise, my friend launched into a denunciation of Caro, not for his partisan views about Johnson but for the length of his books. The author's books, she said, were too long. They had too many details. "No one," she told me, "will ever read them" in future years.

Not sure what that says about me! I thought the book was fascinating. But that aside, I got to thinking about what she said. When is a book too long?

Admittedly, Caro pushes the envelope on book length. Caro is a fine storyteller but an indulgent wordsmith. Not counting notes and index, Master of the Senate is 1040 pages long. Probably at least 100 pages could have been edited out simply by tightening up wordy phrasing (for example, the phrase "Americans whose skins were black" appears multiple times). And undoubtedly, there are many scenes that Caro milks for drama; he could have cut to the chase instead.

Because of its size, the book is physically hard to handle. You can't read it in bed or hold it on your lap. I had to set it on a table top to read. And though I didn't read it all in one gulp, I probably spent at least 40 solid hours reading this book. That's a big investment of time.

Some non-fiction books focus on a single incident in detail. For example, John Hershey's Hiroshima tells of the plight of the atomic bomb victims. Hershey deliberately left out any context about the war in telling the story. He wanted the reader to focus only on the victims' stories, not on what led up to the bombing. A more recent example is David McCullough's 1776. This book tells what happened to George Washington and his army in that single year. McCullough resists giving any background or any knowledge of what is to come.

By contrast, Caro's books are all about context. Caro is not merely telling the story of one man and how he learned to wield power. Instead, he wants to tell the story of Lyndon Johnson's times; the people he encountered and how they affected his life and he theirs; and how people lived and what they thought. Thus, the books are indeed loaded with detail. In the section on the civil rights fight, Caro devotes a full chapter to the murder of Emmett Till, another to the Montgomery bus boycott, and still another to explaining Johnson's racial attitudes as a young man and leading up to 1957.

I think my friend was trying to say that Caro's message was inaccessible to a lot of readers, including herself, because of the method of the telling. But to me his form of telling is the message. There are other books that hit the high spots of LBJ's career. There are other books that tell you what he was like to be around as a person. There are no other books that drip with the rich context of the times and the interconnections between people, events, and character that moved history forward along a path that was never inevitable. This is what makes the book special.

Actually, I think that technology could make Caro's great work accessible to more people. The LBJ books would be perfect candidates for hypertext e-books, in which the reader could follow Caro down into fascinating mini-biographies or background chapters, or choose to proceed on with the main thread of the story. I would like to see future publishers of social history and biography consider this approach.

In the meantime, I'm put in mind of what Tolkien said about Lord of the Rings: "It may be a large book, but evidently it will be none too long in the reading for those who have the appetite."

September 6, 2006: Interview on KEZK

Mary was interviewed by Jim Cox of KEZK in St. Louis this morning about To the Ends of the Earth, and had the opportunity to chat with Jim about Lewis and Clark’s adventure, the price of fame, James Wilkinson, the wild and woolly politics of the Louisiana Territory, &c.

The interview will be aired Sunday, September 10! All you early birds can catch it on 102.5 FM in St. Louis or from anywhere on the web at 6 a.m. Sunday morning.

September 1, 2006: Midwest Book Review

Huzzah! Check out our fantastic review from Midwest Book Review:

Frances Hunter is a pen name for two sisters, Liz and Mary Clare, who wrote "To The Ends of The Earth: The Last Journey of Lewis & Clark" together. It deals with the course of the relationship between Lewis and Clark and the mysterious death of Lewis in 1809, shot in a lonely inn on the Natchez Trace. Timed for release on September 23, 2006, "To The Ends of The Earth" will mark the end of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial. "To the Ends of The Earth" is both a historical novel and a gripping mystery.

It begins where the great expedition of 1803-1806 ends, with Lewis and Clark receiving kudos, fame, and political appointments. Lewis is appointed governor of Louisiana Territory, a virtual kingdom in size, and Clark becomes the Indian superintendent and militia general for the Louisiana Territory. Life in St. Louis, the center from which they operate, is colorful and unregulated in the extreme. While Clark, the more stable of the two, manages to marry well and begin to court financial success, Lewis finds the reality of post-Expedition fame less than palatable, and he sinks into a frightening disintegration of mental illness and alcoholism. The story turns on the relationship between Clark and Lewis, and also the relationship between Clark and York, his companion and slave since childhood.

"To the Ends of the Earth" is full of gritty historical detail and raw imagery that rings true across the years. "To The Ends of The Earth" is historical fiction at its best, pulling the reader in and re-engaging the mind and imagination in the drama that occurred 200 years ago.

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