Eclipse: A Novel of Lewis and Clark

About this book

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 nations 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.