Review by New York Times Review
WHO WAS ESCALANTE and what was his dream? Surprisingly few historians have looked deeply into these questions, but the adventure writer David Roberts has long had a thing for expeditions, and Escalante's was one for the ages. A Franciscan friar in his 20s at the time, Silvestre Vélez de Escalante was second in command of a group of 10 men that set off from Santa Fe in July 1776, charged with blazing a path to the new Spanish mission in Monterey. The leader of the party, Francisco Atanasio Dominguez, left the diary-keeping to Escalante, and he who wields the pen gains the glory, a fact Roberts knows well. His own first book proves the point. "The Mountain of My Fear" detailed his ascent of the forbidding west face of Alaska's Mount Huntington with three Harvard undergraduate buddies - one of whom, Ed Bernd, fell to his death on the descent with a diary in his pocket. The body was never recovered, nor the diary. Fifty-one years after its first publication, "The Mountain of My Fear" is indisputably a classic: terse and brooding, almost unbearably dramatic. In the decades since, Roberts has written about polar explorations, the legends of mountaineering and his discoveries among the Anasazi ruins of the Southwest, among many other subjects. In what he hints may be his final book, he makes another journey of his own - this one by car, with his wife of 49 years, Sharon. The goal is to retrace the path of the Dominguez-Escalante expedition, which carved an irregular circle of 1,700 miles through modernday New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona, then mostly terra incognita to Europeans. Roberts's trip is a wistful one, partly because of the expedition he recreates. Domínguez and Escalante failed to reach Monterey, and their journey is less well known than it ought to be, overshadowed by those of fellow wanderers like Lewis and Clark. The group could as easily have starved or drowned crossing a river as lived. Escalante in fact would not live long, dying within a few years of his return to Santa Fe, likely of a urinary ailment (prostate or bladder cancer, some have surmised). Yet no man in his party was lost, and no hostilities arose in meetings with aboriginal people along the way, despite the padres' incessant proselytizing for the one true Lord. Those two facts alone make it an exceedingly rare story of its kind. The wistfulness of "Escalante's Dream" arises also from Roberts's physical and existential trials. Recovering from treatment for throat cancer, he loses not only his stamina but his ability to enjoy the taste and texture of food. The radiation treatment fried his salivary glands, so he subsists on mushy meals and Starbucks Frappuccinos while tent camping across the Southwest. Often he stands on the side of the road, surveying canyons he wishes he still had the strength to explore on foot. The book that results 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. The one thing he doesn't appear to know is just how cranky he sounds when people he meets along the way don't share his Escalante enthusiasm, including the woman running a visitor center in Jensen, Utah, whom he calls an "old crone." "On Interstate 15, the going felt a little treacherous," he writes of a stormy day south of Provo. Anyone who's read Roberts on his mountaineering exploits can be forgiven a feeling of surprise at the thought of interstate travel spooking someone who completed many an ascent of the most forbidding peaks in Alaska and the Yukon - especially when he's now on the trail of men who ate porcupine and butchered their own horses to avoid starvation. Then again, a diet of Frappuccinos and Brie cheese on Ritz crackers could make anyone a little cranky. And no one can accuse David Roberts of lacking acquaintance with the truly treacherous. PHILIP Connors is the author, most recently, of "A Song for the River," about New Mexico's last undammed watershed.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 23, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
Simultaneously with the founding of the American republic in 1776, Francisco Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, a pair of Franciscan friars, set off from Santa Fe with a tiny missionary band to find a route to Monterey, the newly established Alta California capital. At first glance, they failed. They had little success converting native peoples, and they had to abandon their quest for the Pacific and turn back to Santa Fe. But the detailed journal that Escalante kept of their grand circle tour outlined the topography of what would be called the American Southwest. Several hundred years later, Roberts and his wife set off to retrace Domínguez and Escalante's route across what is now northern New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. Roberts recounts dealing with the hurdles of their expedition's path as well as his own lingering issues from cancer therapies. Roberts marvels at both the scenery and the current inhabitants' near total ignorance of its history; his deep love for this desolate land and awed appreciation for the achievements of earlier explorers make this a great adventure story with appeal far beyond the Southwest. Bibliography included.--Mark Knoblauch Copyright 2019 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In 1776, Franciscan friars Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante led a Spanish entrada (expedition of exploration) in a 1,700-mile loop through the North American Southwest. Only 12 men strong and with few supplies or firearms, the Domínguez-Escalante expedition traversed mighty rivers, yawning canyons, and waterless plateaus as they attempted to chart a trade route from New Mexico to California. Hunger and illness forced the explorers to turn back before reaching California, but none died nor harmed any natives along the way--a stark contrast to earlier Spanish and later American depredations. Thirty years before Lewis and Clark crossed the continent, these two idealistic priests crisscrossed the Southwest. Roberts (Limits of the Known) recounts the expedition's story, blending historical with personal narrative, interpreting, speculating, and reading between the lines of Escalante's diaries. For nearly 40 days, Roberts and his wife retrace the expedition's path on a road trip that is unexciting, but the personal element is poignant. Recently diagnosed with Stage IV cancer, Roberts treats this trip--and book--as his swan song. VERDICT As in Greg MacGregor's photo essay In Search of Dominguez & Escalante, this work breathes new life into a centuries-old journey. [See Prepub Alert, 1/29/19.]--Michael Rodriguez, Univ. of Connecticut, Storrs
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
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 Domnguez and Silvestre Vlez de Escalantein 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. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
