La Salle - Softcover

Vernon, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0803296320 ISBN 13: 9780803296329

Publisher: Bison Books, 2006

Synopsis

The Sieur de La Salle's story begins in 1682, when he sets out with twenty-two Frenchmen, eighteen Indians, and his always-grumbling, epileptic cartographer, Pierre Goupil, to chart the length of the Mississippi River. In the course of this breathtaking novel, we see early America as seldom before. This is a world as foreign to us as any, for, as John Vernon points out, “the map of North America, so etched in our imaginations, with the great furrow of the Mississippi River running down the center of it, did not yet exist for these colonists.” For them, North America is a vivid and dangerous dream of hardship, madness, and poetry.

Not simply an adventure story, La Salle is an epistolary novel in the best eighteenth-century tradition. John Vernon has ingeniously molded historical facts into a set of diary entries by La Salle and Goupil. In their often conflicting and always vigorous styles, the two describe their journey into the wilderness and a world in which the reason and religion of Europe have no place.

First published in 1986, La Salle is a classic of American historical fiction now available in this Bison Books edition.

About this title

About the Author:

John Vernon is a Distinguished Professor of English at Binghamton University and the author of ten books, including a book of poems, a memoir, and five novels. His most recent novel, The Last Canyon, is the story of John Wesley Powell's first trip down the Colorado River. Sue Peabody is an associate professor of history at Washington State University and the author of The Color of Liberty: Histories of Race in France.

From Library Journal:

Eavesdropping on journal entries and letters written by the Sieur de la Salle and his mapmaker, Goupil, provides us with a realistic look at the early exploration of the Mississippi Valley. This first novel portrays La Salle as an increasingly neurotic visionary, and his assistant Goupil as subservient but cognizant of the explorer's quirks. The author introduces us to the pair in alternating passages from the end of La Salle's first trip to America, and then skips ahead to the last trip to Texas and the intervening arrangements. The sense of peeking into these honest, though fictitious, writings is well conveyed by Vernon. A whole book of excerpts might have been boring, but the increasing madness of La Salle and the rough prose of the peasant Goupil creates a rhythm that carries the reader along. A fine novel, and worth adding to most collections. W. Keith McCoy, Dowdell Lib., South Amboy, N.J.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bison Books
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0803296320
• ISBN 13: 9780803296329
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240