Thad Carhart's Across the Endless River is a richly imagined tale of one man's journey in two very different worlds. Jean Baptiste Charbonneau can navigate both Old World and New yet he stands "perpetually between them." Carhart's historical novel is based on actual events. Although not much is known about the real Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, his name appears in accounts of Duke Paul Wilhelm of Wurttemberg, a minor European Royal, who traveled to the Missouri River Valley in the early 1820s and returned home with Jean-Baptiste in 1823 and there remained for the next five years. Carhart's carefully crafted story full of lush descriptions of two very different worlds captured my imagination, just as good historical fiction should. Although I didn't do well with a recent read using an actual person in a fictional setting, this story felt very different. Carhart weaves his story together using real and fictional characters but in a setting that would be wholly natural to them and based closely on historical events.
Jean-Baptiste's birth in 1805 was auspicious. All the more so when his mother, the famed Sacagawea, stood with her beloved son, Pompy, between the ribs of a whale that had washed ashore and been stripped bare leaving only the skeleton. Strapped to Sacagawea's back, Jean-Baptiste traveled along with the Lewis and Clark Expedition, otherwise known as The Corps of Discovery, from St. Louis to Fort Clatsop on the Pacific Coast just months after he was born. Sacagawea and Toussaint Charbonneau, a French voyageur, or fur trader, acted as translators on the journey. For sixteen long and arduous months the party had been traveling, and all had returned safely, including the newborn, who had seen what no one else in the Mandan Tribe had seen.
Although his early years were spent with the Mandans, Pompy could never fully be one of them. As someone with mixed-blood, he could never be entirely of their world though he found acceptance among the tribesmen. He was sent to St. Louis where he became the ward of Captain Clark who had always looked kindly upon the baby who had journeyed so far with the Corps. He promised Pompy's parents that he would offer him a "proper" education. So Pompy became Baptiste and wore European clothes and was educated by the Jesuits. Until the early death of his mother, Baptiste traveled with ease between St. Louis and the Mandan village where he would spend time with his parents.
"...at first his two homes made him feel like two different people: he had different names, languages, food, clothes, lodgings. Nothing was the same in his two worlds. Gradually, though, and with the encouragement of his parents, he came to see that he was one of the few who, like them, could go back and forth, Sometimes he felt as if he lived in between the two places, but eventually he accepted that he lived in both places alternately. As he grew, passing from one to the other came to seem natural."
It's this ability to move almost seamlessly between the two worlds that attracts Duke Paul who's come to the frontier not simply as a tourist but as an amateur naturalist. Baptiste serves as his guide and translator as he collects botanical specimens as well as tribal artifacts to take home to Europe. Impressed by his knowledge and facility with languages, Duke Paul asks Baptiste to accompany him back to Germany where he would help sort out his "treasures" and organize his notes for publication.
So in 1823 when he was only eighteen, he crossed the endless river and will eventually criss-cross the Continent with Duke Paul. His first days in Paris are like "a waking dream". Duke Paul lives in luxury unknown to Baptiste and it's all culture shock at first. But like so many times in his life already, he learns to navigate these new waters and adapt to yet another milieu, though sometimes hard lessons are learned when it comes to social nuances which are not so easy to understand. Perhaps more so here than on the frontier Baptiste suffers from a sense of extreme dislocation. At times he feels more like a specimen in Duke Paul's collection than guest. Although "accorded all the rights of a gentleman" and considered an equal to Duke Paul, he walks between two worlds once again.
Within the narrative are interspersed letters and diary entries, through which the reader learns more about the inner workings and thoughts of both Baptiste and Duke Paul. It's through these entries that some of the more subtle (and perhaps not so subtle) attitudes towards the two cultures are revealed. My only disappointment was that some of the story was told passively through these letters, which I would have liked to know more about. Although lush in the descriptions, the prose is simple and elegant. It's chock full of visuals, so perhaps this was the way to keep the story from becoming unwieldy. All in all this was a nice, enjoyable read with a dash of romance as well as a reflection on what it means to belong to more than one culture and how those cultures at times clash and misunderstand each other. As a small side note, I love the cover of this book. It captures the story so perfectly--the wildness of the frontier overlooking the elegant beauty of Paris and Baptiste looking out across it all.
The Endless River came compliments of FSB Associates. They also sent along an article that the author wrote about imagining what Paris was like historically (the author makes his home there), which I had hoped to incorporate (at least in part) in my review, but it didn't seem to work out that way. I found it interesting, so I may share it later in the week. Paris is such a beautiful city, it's fascinating to read about it, and was interesting to see through the eyes of a young man so foreign to the place. It's even better to travel there, but books are always the next best thing.