07/01/2019
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
[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.
The New York Times Book Review - Philip Connors
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)
"[A] great adventure story."
Booklist (starred review)
"[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."
"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."
"Superbly written, Escalante’s Dream is a multidirectional literary and historical exploration of the unknown American Southwest."
Wall Street Journal - Bruce Berger
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
NOVEMBER 2019 - AudioFile
2019-04-28Limits 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.
