Review

Having written one of the truly iconic books of the second half of the 20th Century, Blue Highways, William Least Heat-Moon has never quit his first-person, itinerant vision of America, but this time it's with a new twist: he's written a fictional account whose narrator is a 30-year-old English physician sailing to the New World to see what there is to see (Is the title an homage to the work of a fellow chronicler of America, Willa Cather's O Pioneers, one wonders?). Cambridge-educated Nathaniel Trennant, M.D., recovering from the death of his wife, is particularly eager to see the American West but during the voyage finds himself greatly taken with a Polish emigree who is heading to a job in Buffalo, New York, as a governess. He is intent on "experiencing America as she is rather than as presented in the immigrant guides." Owing to severe crowding in the Port of New York, Trennant's ship is diverted to Baltimore, where he is hit full in the face with the heretofore only imagined scourge of slavery, visiting the slave pens and auction sites that the locals take for granted and that tear at his conscience. He finds a runaway cowering under his bed and spirits him out of Maryland to safety in Pennsylvania. Nicodemus ("Deems") becomes his traveling companion, a highly intelligent and literate one at that - a former house servant whose mistress had taught him not only to read and write English, but Latin as well. While theoretically possible, this is but one of the imponderables that dog the story throughout. Pursued by a bounty-hunting slave catcher, the duo eventually finds themselves on the Erie Canal, heading from Albany west to Buffalo to visit Trennant's inamorata. On the canal boat's deck, the author waxes philosophic about what he has learned from his companion, foreshadowing 21st Century conversations surrounding White Privilege: "I will be forever indebted for his revealing to me the narrowness of a life of privileges, earned by me but bequeathed by forebears." Another anticipatory remark is that "I fear Americans are not contemplating the effects mechanical propulsion will have on their economy. On their democracy. On their lives." And, as though contemplating the present day, "The lower our compass of tolerance, the lower our compass of democracy." As negatively impacted as he was by slavery, Trennant is struck over and over by America's devotion to money-making. "Once again I point out Washington's understanding that American democracy in no small measure depends upon commerce." And, "Always, over the next mountain lies unbroken land to be taken and turned to profit. No one yet seems to consider a day of reckoning, when extraction can no longer drive the economy." Eventually the doctor and the runaway find the American West and, for Deems, the opportunity to be truly free and for Tennant, the reminder that while he loves the West, his greater love is in Buffalo, if she'll only meet him half-way, in St. Louis. This makes for enjoyable reading with well-researched insights into what travel in 1848 America must have been like. If you forgive the narrator's prescience that at times strains credulity, it's easy to lose yourself in his narrative and enjoy the ride.

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