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Yvonne Crittenden The Toronto Sun Like that very good Civil War novel Cold Mountain...[The Good Journey] tells a historical story through the eyes of a memorable character. An absorbing and moving read.
Auteur
Micaela Gilchrist
Texte du rabat
In 1826, after knowing him for only three days, Mary Bullet, a headstrong Southern belle, abandons her life of privilege to marry General Henry Atkinson; a man twice her age and the most powerful military commander on the Western frontier. But when she follows him to an army post in the small Creole village of St. Louis, she quickly discovers that her life is governed by an ancient quest for revenge and her husband's many deceptions.
Résumé
Inspired by actual letters, The Good Journey breathes life into history with a richly imagined chronicle of twenty tumultuous years in the marriage of two American pioneers.
Strong-willed Southern belle Mary Bullitt abandons her life of luxury in Louisville, Kentucky, when she marries General Henry Atkinson and accompanies him to his outpost on the Mississippi. Nothing has prepared her for marriage to this attractive older man -- or for the realities of frontier living. Conditions are primitive, Mary knows virtually nothing about her husband, and the threat of attack from Indians is constant. A rough and resourceful general, Henry is engaged in a long and historic clash with a great Native American leader, and his deeply conflicted feelings about Indians mirror those he and his wife have for each other.
In the tradition of Willa Cather and Edna Ferber, Micaela Gilchrist has crafted an exciting novel that is at once a love story and an action-packed depiction of the struggle for the West.
Échantillon de lecture
Chapter One
Louisville, Kentucky, January 1826
gThere is no place more unforgiving or colder than a Louisville church on the first Sunday after Christmas, I thought as I navigated my way to our family pew. Despite the clutter of bodies, the air was glacial perfection, and with each passing moment, my hands and feet became more blockish and icy. Surely this was what was meant by mortification of the flesh. I grimaced at the Reverend Shaw, who said there was no contradiction to be found in the biblical entreaty to render unto Caesar. I could have cared less what Caesar was or was not owed, because the winter sun through the window burned a nick upon the back of my neck.
My neck was on fire and my feet were numb with cold. They would find me dead in my place after service, with a scalded neck and blue, frostbitten feet. I slumped in the pew, away from the light, and poked the leather cover of my psalmbook with a gloved finger. That winter, I was twenty-two and discomfited at having been forced to attend service. Mama rapped me sharply with her Bible. I gasped and bent over, complaining of a fainting spell. The odor of wood oil filled my nostrils. I peered around Ma and caught the gaze of a brigadier general grinning from the pew directly across the aisle. He leaned over his knees with his hands upon his white breeches, mocking my discomfort.
I stared at the General in a way that I hoped made him feel much reduced in rank. I quirked a brow, which he mistook for encouragement, because he tickled the air with his fingers. I lifted my chin to let him know I disapproved, but he seemed pleased by my lofty pretense. He looked pointedly at the door and then at me. Forty, I estimated, about the same age as my pa, and he died of the afflictions of age in the spring of last year. This General was dark haired; he had a proud and stern countenance and remarkable blue eyes.
I was intrigued by his bad behavior and felt an odd prickling on the surface of my forearms when he regarded me as if determining my worth. My seventeen-year-old sister, the precocious Eloise, a child prone to homely outbursts about the mischief in her heart, squirmed about as the General smiled at her. At the tap of Eloise's fingers upon my skirt, I tipped my ear to catch her whispers.
"He is as proud as a prince and he's staring so lasciviously. What kind of a man stares so in church?"
I wiggled my fingers and blew upon them. "Glance away, Eloise, do not meet his gaze; you should elevate your thoughts and disregard that gentleman. And you hush up. Mama's going to beat me like a stray dog if I let you whisper at me through service."
"Mary, I was wrong. That is no stare; that rises to a leer. He is at least as old as Papa, and military men are poor, even the generals."
"Eloise, look at my neck. Am I getting a blister on my neck from sunburn?"
She wrinkled her nose and examined me. "No, but you have farmer wrinkles there. Looks to me as if you've passed summers tethered to the hemp-break wheels at Oxmoor. Mary! Will you focus on the matter at hand? I was talking to you about that general over there who wants you. Listen to me!" Eloise rubbed her hands over mine. "I was at General Cadwallader's last evening for the musicale, and by the bye, Lizzie Griffin played the harp so ploddingly you would have thought her loaded up to her ears with laudanum. All Lizzie could talk about last night was your admirer, that ruddy-faced general across the aisle. She said he's come from St. Louis, and though he spends his days at the Western Department headquarters, he spends his nights searching for a bride. The General has declared himself ready for sons. Now he goes in search of their mother. The rumor is, several belles have set their caps for him."
"I hope he finds a respectable old widow. They could spoon castor oil into one another and commiserate about the gout."
"Lizzie says you're in view of his sparking." I ignored that comment. It was too dreadful to contemplate. Eloise blathered on: "It was Uncle William Clark who is guilty of arranging this. He thinks you're hopeless, Mary. He told me so, over supper yesterday. Just you watch, that general will force an introduction to Ma after service. Indeed, I'll wager Mama expects such a thing. Surely Uncle William has talked to her. It's a conspiracy to deprive you of your freedom. They're going to toss the yoke of subjugation about your shoulders and force you to give birth to furry little babies that look just like that general."
Mama swooped over me in a rustle of organdy, sending her anise-scented breath my way. She put her lips to my ear and whispered, "Mary, take one peek over the aisle at the handsome general and smile fetchingly."
I puckered my chin and rubbed my cold fingers upon it, because it pleasantly resembled a peach pit. "Fetchingly, Mama? What's your idea of 'fetchingly'?"
"Like this," Eloise simpered, rattling her eyelashes and rounding her lips into a coo.
I squinted at the General. By this time, he was brashly ignoring the sermon altogether and had turned sideways on the bench to stare boldly at me with an amused expression. The General had a disconcerting manner of looking at a woman. In the dark confines of my black satin slippers, I curled my toes.
Eloise leaned back and looked around behind my head. "It's not as though the General's hands are bluish and shaky. He's not drooling, and I don't see a walking stick. He appears vigorous. Maybe you could get one baby out of him before he dies."
Mama lifted the flat of her hand and walloped me.
"Mama, I did not come to church to harvest bruises!"
"I told you to smile once at that general, Mary, not babble to Eloise all through service. Now, you girls be reverent, mind your prayers and your manners. And don't look at that general anymore. One glance is enough, or you'll appear too eager. Honestly, sometimes I feel I've failed utterly. I'm raising up a litter of Hottentots."
Of course, lingering in the air at all times was Mama's disappointment in me. Mama was a Gwathmey, one of the Grand English Gwathmeys of the Virginia tidewater. She …