In July 1903, Leonidas Hubbard set out to explore the uncharted interior of Labrador by canoe, accompanied by Dillon Wallace, his best friend, and George Elson, a Metis guide. Bad luck and bad judgment led the expedition into disaster and the party was forced to turn back. Hubbard died of starvation just thirty miles from camp. Two years later Wallace decided to complete the overland expedition and clear himself of blame for Hubbard's death. He had, however, a rival - Mina Hubbard. She blamed Wallace for her husband's death and, with Elson as her guide, intended to complete the trek first. The result was an epic race between the avenging widow and her husband's best friend. Reconstructing the story from the long-lost journals and diaries of the 1903 and 1905 expeditions, James Davidson and John Rugge trace the explorers' routes and re-create the saga. "Great Heart" is a gripping drama of individuals pushed to the limits of human endurance.
James West Davidson is a historian, writer, and wilderness paddler. He received his Ph.D. in American history from Yale University and writes full time. He is also co-editor, with Michael Stoff, of New Narratives in American History, a series published by Oxford University Press, as well as the coauthor of textbooks in American history. These include "Experience History," "After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection," and "US: A Narrative History" for the college level and "The American Nation" for the middle grades.
On a river, an eddy line marks the boundary between slack water and swift. Broaching the line, you sometimes find yourself swept quickly downstream and around a bend. As a historian, I've crossed more than one eddy line to ride currents pulling in different directions, from thinking about the end of the world to paddling the barrens of Labrador to viewing the rise of segregation through the eyes of one woman. A through-line that unites these disparate subjects is the attraction to journeys and their obsessional consequences. If you believe that your own life is joined to a biblical history of redemption--in which the world's end will soon draw nigh--how will that conviction affect your everyday behavior? ("The Logic of Millennial Thought") If you are a black woman born into freedom after the Civil War, whose goals at first seem to be teaching school, finding a husband and enjoying a decent middle-class life, how does the particular set of your character propel you to risk life and limb opposing a rising epidemic of lynching? ("They Say: Ida B. Wells and the Reconstruction of Race") If you cross Labrador intent on making a name in journalism, how far will you court hardship and starvation in order to succeed? And if you are the widow of the man who pushed one lake too far, where will your own obsessions take you in seeking to complete your husband's work? ("Great Heart: The History of a Labrador Adventure")
We all begin journeys thinking we know where we're going, and we seldom do. Yet the course of every odyssey springs from the way in which an individual's character bends, breaks, or masters the larger movements of the day. Watching such journeys play out provides a singular pleasure, very much akin to riding the currents of a river from its turbulent headwaters to the final outwash in the sea.
