The Gates of the Alamo - Hardcover

Harrigan, Stephen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679447172 ISBN 13: 9780679447177

Publisher: Knopf, 2000

Synopsis

A huge, riveting, deeply imagined novel about the siege and fall of the Alamo, an event that formed the consciousness of Texas and that resonates through American history. With its vibrant, unexpected characters and its richness of authentic detail, The Gates of the Alamo is an unforgettable re-creation of a time, a place, and a heroic conflict.

The time is 1835. At the center of a canvas crowded with Mexicans and Americans, with Karankawa and Comanche Indians, with settlers of many nationalities, stand three people whose fortunes quickly become our urgent concern: Edmund McGowan, a naturalist of towering courage and intellect, whose life's work is threatened by the war against Mexico and whose character is tested by his own dangerous pride; Mary Mott, a widowed innkeeper on the Texas coast, a determined and resourceful woman; and her sixteen-year-old son, Terrell, whose first shattering experience with love leads him instead to war, and into the crucible of the Alamo.

As Edmund McGowan and Mary Mott take off in pursuit of Terrell and follow him into the fortress, the powerful but wary attraction between them deepens. And the reader is drawn with them into the harrowing days of the battle itself.

Never before has the fall of the Alamo been portrayed with such immediacy. And for the first time the story is told not just from the perspective of the American defenders but from that of the Mexican attackers as well. We follow Blas Montoya, a sergeant in an elite sharpshooter company, as he fights to keep his men alive not only in the inferno of battle but also during the long forced march north from Mexico proper to Texas. And through the eyes of the ambitious mapmaker Telesforo Villasenor, we witness the cold deliberations of General Santa Anna.

Filled with dramatic scenes, abounding in fictional and historical personalities -- among them James Bowie, David Crockett, and William Travis -- The Gates of the Alamo enfolds us in history, and through its remarkable and passionate storytelling allows us to participate at last in an American legend.

About this title

Review:

A novel about the Alamo promises as much suspense as a movie about the Titanic: we already know how it's going to end. The bloody siege of the Alamo was, of course, not only the defining crisis in the Texan struggle for independence from Mexico but also an event that secured martyrdom for the 200 or so men who died there and transformed a dusty Franciscan mission into a national shrine, an American Troy. As with all mythologized chronicles, however, the Battle of the Alamo ultimately resolves into mundane fact, a catalog of human error, ego, and heroism. And it is these details that Stephen Harrigan regards in his broad and powerful third novel, The Gates of the Alamo.

Passing lightly over the oft-profiled Alamo stalwarts--Jim Bowie, Davy Crockett, and the young commander William Travis--Harrigan focuses on fictional secondaries, primarily botanist Edmund McGowan and mother and son Mary and Terrell Mott. Rigidly devoted to his work, Edmund straddles the fence in the dispute over Texas, even as war murmurs grow. But when he meets widowed Mary, who maintains her small inn with a steady, gentle resourcefulness, his good nature pulls him steadily into the inevitable conflict. Mary herself is forced to quarter Mexican soldiers; and then, as she watches incredulously, her young son seeks to test himself in the erupting skirmishes. Eventually the trio find themselves inside the Alamo during the nearly two-week battle, their various conciliations frustrated by the surrounding mayhem.

Harrigan's Texas is an uncertain, dangerous jostling of peoples, a place where disaster threatens too frequently, where practical knowledge is paramount and political ambivalence untenable, and where a primal beauty appears often as if by magic: "Hundreds and hundreds of lush gray cranes ... spanned the sky almost from horizon to horizon, and the whole procession moved with the quiet, ordained manner in which events unfold in a dream." However, the emblematic significance of the Alamo itself remains inscrutable. As Mary tends to the dying, watching hope turn to hopelessness, she can only respond to Travis's rallying orations with disillusionment: "She had heard enough of these empty patriotic effusions by now to feel that the Alamo was nothing but a sinking island of rhetoric." The Gates of the Alamo nonetheless sweeps us into the many and variegated smaller stories that compose the larger one. It's a book to remember. --Ben Guterson

From the Publisher:

"Following the examples of novelists like Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurtry . . . a genuinely moving epic and, paradoxically, yet another unforgettable Alamo."
-- Newsweek

"A time and a place, a vanished world in which gallant death and honor still held tangible appeal, while merciless slaughter was more likely the rule, are evoked with great skill."
-- New York Times Book Review

"Riveting . . . The strength of Harrigan's extraordinarily authentic novel is in its superior storytelling."
-- The Washington Post

"In a large, lush book [Harrigan] eloquently and dramatically recasts the myth that was born on March 6th 1836. . . . [His] gift to us is an artful, intelligent novel that makes the hard work of memory terrifically worthwhile."
-- Boston Globe

"Harrigan retells the story of the Alamo with consummate skill, weaving a wealth of historical detail into a tight, moving human drama. . . .[He] has crafted a compulsively readable historical drama on a grand scale, peopled with highly believable frontier personalities--Mexican as well as American--and suffused with period authenticity."
-- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Harrigan builds slowly and surely toward the story's inevitable, impressive climax, examining in thrilling detail his several protagonists' quests for both freedom and fulfillment. . . . An original work of high distinction indeed: as fine a historical novel as any within recent memory, and far and away Harrigan's best book yet."
-- Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"We have the first great novel of the 21st century. . . . This is storytelling at its finest, an opportunity to learn and be royally entertained at the same time. . . . Has the potential to join history-based novels such as Gone With the Wind and Lonesome Dove as eternal bestsellers as well as critically acclaimed titles. A stunning literary achievement."
-- Ft. Worth Star-Telegram

"The Gates of the Alamo is a crackerjack good read. A moving story of ordinary human beings caught up in extraordinary events . . . In the final analysis, The Gates of the Alamo is as good a novel about the Texas Revolution and its most famous incident as has ever been published by anyone."
-- Texas Observer

"For all readers, not merely historians or others fascinated by the heroics of the story. It deserves a place among the best books ever written about this legendary battle."
-- Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"Stephen Harrigan's The Gates of the Alamo is a graphic, beautifully written account of that savage confrontation that makes us care about the people on both sides of the wall."
--John Sayles

"So deft in richly authentic detail that it's easy to forget this is a deeply imagined yarn . . . The Gates of the Alamo is a picturesque historical saga comparable to Lonesome Dove and The Killer Angels . . . a new masterpiece in the literature of fact."
-- Christian Science Monitor

"A heart-stopping, realistic depiction of the Battle of the Alamo."
-- Booklist

"A rare achievement...Readers will learn more about the real story of the Alamo from this book than from many of the histories that have appeared over the years, and yet be treated to a compelling human story."
-- William C. Davis

"Although fiction, The Gates of the Alamo joins that short shelf of works deserving permanent use when searching for the everyday events behind the myths and legends of that enormous time -- a time involving not just that handful of persons within the Alamo mission walls, but the fate and future of three nations. The author has done a remarkable job of making us part of those tense, fearful and uncertain days when the defenders of the fabled place had to make life or death decisions while undergoing constant bombardment and conflicting rumors of rescue. The immortal question is: did they stay out of bravado or out of hopeful expectation? Stephen Harrigan gives considered answers which add real dimensions to this outsized history that has become part of the world's vocabulary."
-- A. C. Greene

"The Gates of the Alamo represents a remarkable blending of historical framework and fictional narrative. After years of painstaking research, Stephen Harrigan has crafted a story that has the ring of authenticity, stripping away much of the romanticism that has always encrusted the Alamo story, yet revealing the far greater drama of fact-based storytelling. Thanks to the author's synthesis of the latest and most authoritative Alamo research, readers will learn more about the real story of the Alamo from this book than from many of the histories that have appeared over the years, and yet be treated to a compelling human story at the same time. That is a rare achievement, and one surely destined to draw a host of readers through The Gates of the Alamo."
-- William C. Davis, author of Three Roads to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of David Bowie, David Crockett, and William Barret Travis

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0679447172
• ISBN 13: 9780679447177
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 592