Review of THE EXPEDITIONS
Posted on February 10th, 2010
The Expeditions
By Karl Iagnemma
The Dial Press, 336 pages
ISBN 978-0-553-33595-9
Sixteen-year old Elisha Stone loves nothing more than the secret beauty of nature, and in the summer of 1844 he is about to begin a transformational journey into the rugged and untamed wilderness of northern Michigan. Having run away from his home in Newell, Massachusetts, slightly more than three years ago, the fiercely independent Elisha has worked his way across the country to Detroit, Michigan. Now the sensitive and artistic young man has landed himself what he believes will be a dream job with an eclectic expeditionary team that will include Mr. Silas A. Brush, the entrepreneurial though duplicitous surveyor, Professor George Tiffin, the agenda-driven and relentless anthropologist, and Susette Morel, the singularly beautiful but mysterious half-breed Chippewa guide. Before leaving on his demanding journey into unexplored Indian country, Elisha writes a poignant letter to his mother, and it is that letter—and the expedition which follows—that will forever transform more than one life.
When Elisha’s estranged father, the spiritually and emotionally conflicted Reverend William Edward Stone, receives the letter, he understands “suddenly that he must leave Newell and go to his son, to tell the boy about his mother’s death.” Now, after three years of knowing absolutely nothing about his son’s whereabouts, the acutely ill Reverend finally has a clue as to where his son might be, and so—hoping and praying for reconciliation and forgiveness—he begins his own harrowing expedition westward to Michigan and northward into the primitive wilderness.
As something like a Transcendentalist bildüngsroman in which the protagonist and other characters must confront the sacred and profane on their individual and collective odysseys, The Expeditions, prize-winning author Karl Iagnemma’s spell-binding debut novel is provocative, elegiac, and highly recommended. The major characters must navigate through challenging hazards and obstacles—real and imagined—and at the end of their collective pilgrimage each person, in his or her own way, will discover that the unspoiled natural world might be the one place—other than deep within the self—where a person can begin finding answers to life’s most perplexing mysteries. However, as Elisha and his father will both eventually realize, neither science alone nor religion alone are sufficient. The obligatory quest for truth must go beyond those arbitrary boundaries.
Tags: Anthropologist, Debut Novel, Dial Press, Dream Job, Elisha, Expeditions, Half Breed, Karl Iagnemma, Newell, Northern Michigan, Poignant Letter, Primitive Wilderness, Professor George, Protagonist, Reverend William, Secret Beauty, Silas, Susette, Transformational Journey, Untamed Wilderness
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