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Narrated by Robert Fass
David RobertsUnabridged — 11 hours, 28 minutes
Narrated by Robert Fass
David RobertsUnabridged — 11 hours, 28 minutes
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Famed adventure writer David Roberts retraces the route of the legendary Dominguez-Escalante expedition.
In July 1776 a pair of Franciscan friars, Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Silvestre Velez de Escalante, were charged by the governor of New Mexico with discovering a route across the unknown Southwest to the new Spanish colony in California. They had other goals as well, some of them secret: converting the indigenous natives along the way to the true faith, discovering a semi-mythical paradise known as Teguayo, hunting for sources of gold and silver, and paving the way for Spanish settlements from Santa Fe to Monterey.
In strict terms, the expedition failed. Running out of food and beset by an early winter, the twelve-man team gave up in what is now western Utah. The retreat to Santa Fe became an ordeal of survival. The men were reduced to eating their own horses while they searched for a crossing of the raging Colorado River in Glen Canyon. Seven months after setting out, Dominguez and Escalante staggered back to Santa Fe. Yet in the course of their 1,700-mile voyage, the explorers discovered more land unknown to Europeans than Lewis and Clark would encounter a quarter-century later.
[Escalante's Dream] is an amiably discursive, often beguiling entry in what has become a venerable literary form: the expedition in pursuit of an expedition. Roberts knows his Southwestern history, and he knows how to craft an artful sentence.
05/20/2019
In this somewhat disappointing entry, adventure writer Roberts (The Mountain of My Fear) describes a six-week journey that he and his wife made through Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, intending to follow in the footsteps of two 18th-century Spanish friars. In 1776, Silvestre Velez de Escalante and Francisco Atanasio Dominguez undertook an expedition across North America, at the command of the viceroy of Mexico, in the hopes of developing trade routes and winning converts to Catholicism. Roberts planned to traverse the route laid out in Escalante’s diary, but the limitations of the now-75-year-old writer’s health and other setbacks forced changes, and he and his wife mostly didn’t even attempt to follow the actual route, which frequently involved harsh terrain and dangerous conditions. The narrative bogs down in mundane details—unsuccessful attempts to see parks and other places that are closed, the particular ingredients of lunches eaten while camping—from which no significance is wrung and which don’t connect to Escalante’s travels. At the journey’s end, Roberts reflects that he has “gone someplace far and strange and wonderful” with his wife. It’s a touching tribute, but this slow-paced tale of a marital road trip is likely only to interest Roberts’s most ardent fans. (July)
"Superbly written, Escalante’s Dream is a multidirectional literary and historical exploration of the unknown American Southwest."
"A luminous work of exploration, both personal and historical, written by one of my very favorite writers of the American Southwest. This is a piercingly beautiful and eloquent book."
"[A] great adventure story."
"[A]n amiably discursive, often beguiling entry in what has become a venerable literary form: the expedition in pursuit of an expedition. Roberts knows his Southwestern history, and he knows how to craft an artful sentence."
Writer David Roberts originally sets out to follow the path of the two Franciscan priests who led an exploration through the U.S. Southwest in 1776. But he soon deviates from his mission, and those deviations show up in Robert Fass's faithful narration of this audiobook. Whether Roberts is waxing nostalgic for maps or grumbling about how little people know about Silvestre Vélez de Escalante and Francisco Atanasio Domínguez, Fass projects the author's tone in his narration. Sometimes that's amusing, but there's a serious side, too. Roberts traveled after having cancer treatment, and his story includes his experience of growing closer to his wife, Sharon, along the way. Listeners will find themselves as involved in the Roberts' relationship as they are in the couple’s historical adventure. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
2019-04-28
Journalist, mountaineer, and popular historian Roberts (Limits of the Known, 2018, etc.) ventures deep into the rugged country of the Colorado Plateau in this tale of its earliest European explorers.
It was a flash of inspiration on the part of a California-based prelate that sent Francisco Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante—in Roberts' shorthand, "D-E"—riding from Santa Fe westward in late July 1776: It stood to reason that by doing so, they would end up at Monterey Bay. Things weren't quite so clear-cut; as Roberts recounts, they went without much preparation and with little idea of what awaited them, and, he adds, "To plunge into wilderness virtually unarmed and untrained for war would have seemed suicidal to most Spanish officials in New Mexico." D-E bumbled about, making contact with Native peoples unknown to the Spanish administrators but eventually learning that impediments such as the great deserts and canyons of the Colorado Plateau country ruled out an easy route connecting Spain's colonial provinces. While traveling their route, Roberts, ill with a recurring but for now manageable cancer and all the more intrepid for it, pays homage to his own partner of many years while recounting some of the more modern dangers that await in the form of camo-clad hunters and survivalists. Anthropologically inclined readers will note that some of Roberts' book learning is well out of date, with ethnic designations such as Papago and Anasazi long since supplanted; and though he critiques William Least Heat-Moon's travel writing in passing, there are more than a few of the same genre conventions at work here. Readers looking for a comprehensive account of the expedition will find too much Roberts in it, and readers eager to read Roberts' travelogue will find the Spanish colonial history laid on too thickly. Readers with a sense for both history and a living narrator, though, will find it just right, and they'll be glad that Roberts has lived to tell the tale.
Armchair travelers looking for transport into difficult places will find this an engaging companion.
| BN ID: | 2940173826725 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HighBridge Company |
| Publication date: | 08/27/2019 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
