Eclipse
A Novel of Lewis and Clark
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4.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Lewis and Clark: forever paired for their epochal first crossing of the continent in 1804-1806, darlings of the young republic, and the pride of Thomas Jefferson because they made his dream of a nation between two oceans come true.
Lewis and Clark: two great but very different men.
Plain-spoken William Clark, enjoys the triumphs and acclaim of the expedition, marries his childhood sweetheart, and settles in St. Louis as superintendent of the nation's Indian affairs. His black manservant, York, who accompanied the expedition, forces Clark to confront the very nature of slavery and question the society that condoned it.
Meriwether Lewis, a man of fierce courage and brilliant intellect, returns from the Pacific a changed man. Something terrible has happened to him, something insidious, a disease with no name that erodes his health, threatens to destroy his mind--and his honor.
In Eclipse, Richard S. Wheeler has written a tour de force novel, an exploration of triumph and tragedy told in the authentically rendered voices of the two greatest American explorers.
Moreover, Wheeler provides a solution--dark in its ramifications--to one of the greatest mysteries in American history: the terrible and unexplained death of Meriwether Lewis, age thirty-five, in the wilderness of the Natchez Trace of Tennessee in October, 1809.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
From the prolific recipient of the Owen Wister Award for his lifetime contribution to western literature comes this latest unashamedly revisionist fiction suggesting that legendary explorer Meriwether Lewis's mysterious death in 1809 at age 35 was a suicide in response to his raging third-stage syphilis. Told alternately in the voices of Lewis and his fellow-explorer William Clark, the narrative follows the divergent lives of the two men after they return triumphant from their expedition in 1806. Under the guise of concern for his ailing men, Lewis a scholar, scientist and confidant to Jefferson secretly consults a physician and confirms he has contracted syphilis. He travels to Washington to bask in praise and collect the promised governmental remuneration for himself, Clark and their company. After both men are awarded 1,600 acres of public land, Lewis goes to St. Louis in 1808 as governor of the Louisiana Territory, and Clark newly married to his 16-year-old cousin follows, becoming superintendent of the nation's Indian affairs. The novel particularly focuses on the enigmatic decline of the once brilliant Lewis, who most likely suffered from syphilis-induced dementia at the end of his life. Wheeler bases his story on the recent research of Seattle epidemiologist Reimert Thorolf Ravenholt, who has argued that Lewis contracted the disease during his stay with the Shoshone. Short on action and long on psychological realism, the book should be appreciated by lovers of Western history and lore.
