Customer Reviews

Corps of Discovery: A Novel: Based on the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1803-1806

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This is a gritty, you are there take on the progress of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Tenney has a good feel for the ways and motives of men such as these must have been--tough, far from gabby (a thing that struck later European and East Coast travelers in the West was how silent the men were), men good and bad but mostly well in between. Tenney clearly knows what it's like to make your way through this territory. As I followed Corpsmen pressing and weaving through the brush along the Missouri I half expected the sting on the face from a backlashing branch. That's the kind of thing I mean by 'knowledge of the ground'. Although I am not anyone who could really know about this, Tenney's Indians seem vastly more believable than those in other Old West writings familiar to me. THESE original Americans differ markedly (yet, realistically, not utterly) from the Corpsmen in their thoughtways. They are definitely Other. But, and this can't have been easy to do, Tenney gives shape to these thoughtways so that they strike the reader as unexpected yet valid, not wholly fathomable yet worthy of respect, and (so far as I could see) devoid of false modernity. I found this book a rewarding read and expect many others will agree.

Excellent novel, interesting characters, both heroes and scumbags. It may have been just like this on the real journey.

This one, plain and simple, has made me a believer in historical fiction. Too much of what I have tried in the past has suffered from weak and glorified characterizations, improbable, synthetic, hyped, and ultimately lifeless re-portrayals of media-worn events. Jeffrey W. Tenney provides us with a ground-level view of the historical, wherein the epic is broken down into its smallest, untidiest increments, and characters falter as much as they charge ahead.

Everyone knows the basic plot and the "star" characters of this epic story. Who would not now, after so many conventional renditions, prefer to see the Lewis and Clark Expedition through the eyes of characters like William Clark's slave, York? Or through those of the hunters, who spend most of their time in the backcountry where "captain's orders" pale in the presence of the onrushing grizzly bear or the hard-faced Indian warrior?

Tenney's narrative, pacing, and dialogue take the reader on a smooth, entertaining ride, but characters are the heart of this novel. The soldiers, hunters, guides, and boatmen of the Expedition, as well as the Indians met along the way, come in those mixes of flaw and virtue that make people interesting and sympathetic. Characters must battle their own inner enemies while contending with the layers of outer conflict the author heaps upon them. Using a highly creative structure, in each new chapter Tenney shifts perspective to portray different characters' experiences with these struggles. This device makes for chapters as vivid as short stories, the whole of the novel unfolding like a carefully pieced and brightly hued quilt.

I recommend Corps of Discovery highly for the history buff, but even more so for the novice of that genre, as a guide to what it can be at its best.

For those of us fascinated by the Lewis and Clark Expedition, this new novel by Jeffrey W. Tenney uses fiction to bring history dramatically to life. With an engaging style and a superb breadth of knowledge, the author has crafted a masterpiece. Reading this book will reveal the challenges and eventual triumphs of this first "Man to the Moon" quest in the nascent United States.