Melancholy Fate of Capt. Lewis Book

Massive debts and alcoholism. Drug abuse and failed courtships. And then, dead by his own hand, just three years after his triumphant return from the Pacific. Thus, on October 11, 1809, Meriwether Lewis became the tragic hero of one of the great untold stories of American history.

Now, for the 200th anniversary of his death, Bill Lewis, a high-school history teacher, is writing a book about his famous namesake that tells the rest of the story, one that includes the man who killed Alexander Hamilton--the traitor Aaron Burr--his daughter Theodosia (who believed she and her father would seize control of the western U.S. and Mexico and become emperors}, the writer Washington Irving, and the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley's wido, Mary. Meanwhile, Bill has problems of his own. his 14-year-old son Henry won't eat. He's gotten pulled into the troubled life of a pregnant student. And his clinical depression is back, which puts the fate of everything--his book, his family, his 13-year marraige to Emily, and his survival past 40--into even greater uncertainty. If he can only explain the mystery of why Meriwether ended his life as he did before Bill loses himself irrevocably in the compelling voice of his namesake.

In this rich, confident debut novel, Michael Pritchett not only authentically recreates the world through which Lewis and Clark forced their way but also finds extraordinary parallels between Capt. Lewis's doubt about manifest destiny and the contemporary uncertainty of the introspective modern male at a time when all our values are in question.