Fiction Hardcover
ISBN-13:
978-1-932961-41-6
6 x 9 / 416 Pages / $24.95
November 2007
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While writing a biography of his famous namesake, Bill Lewis, a high-school history teacher, nearly loses himself in his attempts to understand one of the great untold stories in American history--the adventures and subsequent suicide of Meriwether Lewis. Even as he struggles to illuminate that strange and exuberant time and and falls under the spell of the elusively seductive persona of Capt. Lewis, Bill finds himself fighting his own personal crisis, brought on by a clinical depression that threatens not only his book, but his job, his family, his 13-year marriage, and his own survival past the age of 40.
In this rich, confident debut novel, Michael Pritchett not only authentically recreates the world through which Lewis and Clark forced their way, but also finds extraordinary parallels between Capt. Lewis’s doubt about manifest destiny and the contemporary uncertainty of the introspective modern male at a time when all our values are in question.
A November 2007 Book Sense Pick!
A Midwest Connections Pick!
“Packed with strange characters and striking discoveries, The Melancholy Fate of Capt. Lewis explores one of America's most legendary adventures and surveys the emotional landscape of its sorry hero…Absorbing, insightful and heartrending…the mix of modern and 18th-century events is strange and startling. Pritchett has created two distinct but entwined voices that provide an absorbing reenactment of history and what goes on in a writer's mind.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post Book World
“With publication of Michael Pritchett's debut novel, The Melancholy Fate of Captain Lewis, Unbridled has again introduced an extraordinary writer to the world…the novel will also stay with me for a long time, because Bill Lewis and Pritchett's other fictional creations are so skillfully rendered.”—The Denver Post
“…the life of explorer Lewis is juxtaposed with that of his modern-day biographer, Bill Lewis, a high school teacher who struggles against his own depression. Pritchett, a writing teacher at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, shows that past and present have more in common than we usually believe.”—Oregonian
"The alternating sections reveal Pritchett's mastery of voice . . . this is a remarkable exploration of the life of one of history's great explorers." — The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Ambitious…A challenging novel that can lead you to reconsider one of our country's greatest adventure stories.”—Seattle Times
"The two Lewises are brilliantly characterized, particularly the historic one." —West End Word
"...Pritchett's work holds our interest, and it's a more than satisfying read for those in search of ambitious, literary history willing to explore the wildness around and inside our very selves." —NewPages.com
“Bill Lewis seeks answers -- answers to his life's problems and answers that explain the life and more importantly the death of his namesake, the famous explorer Capt. Lewis -- as he writes the story of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. THE MELANCHOLY FATE OF CAPT LEWIS invites the reader to find parallels between the worlds of the two Lewises as each fights against being drowned in a rising tide of of change 100 years apart. Pritchett does an exceptional job of showing Bill Lewis' depression and of giving us a double treat of a book within a book.” —Vicki Erwin, Main Street Books, St. Charles, MO
“Engaged in writing a biography of celebrated Western explorer Meriwether Lewis, high school English teacher Bill Lewis comes to share his namesake’s penchant for despondency in this careful novel of depression and heroism. The historical sections reveal vivid details about the earlier Lewis’s outsized life while the contemporary plot shows Bill’s struggling modern family as it searches, achingly, for a new realm where healing and transcendence are possible.” —Watermark Books & Café, Wichita, Kansas
“The author has done a superb job of capturing the essence of these two stories and communicating the experiential feelings of Capt. Lewis and Bill Lewis, the high school history teacher. We already know how Capt. Lewis dealt with his depression...What we don’t know until the end is how Bill Lewis deals with his...We rated this novel five hearts.” —Heartland Reviews
“When high-school history teacher Bill Lewis decides to write a biography of Meriwether Lewis, he becomes engrossed in both the triumphs and tragedies of the great explorer…the side-by-side story lines complement and reinforce one another…Pritchett’s contemporary twist illuminates an old subject in a new light.” —Booklist
"The Melancholy Fate of Capt. Lewis is a truly splendid novel of history, one that illuminates the great themes that such novels uniquely can. It shows us how the past is always with us and how the passions and tremblings of the human spirit endure even the passage of centuries. With this book, Michael Pritchett has instantly established himself as one of our finest novelists." —Robert Olen Butler
"The special eloquence of Michael Pritchett's new novel about Lewis and Clark is rooted in his understanding of the melancholy that follows discovery and the closure of distance. When the unknown turns into the known, it is domesticated and thus becomes ours. In this story, the New World turns almost instantly into the Old World, and the melancholy we all suffer from is laid bare, with understanding, compassion, eloquence, and drama, in two parallel narratives that are unforgettable." —Charles Baxter
"In The Melancholy Fate of Capt. Lewis Michael Pritchett brings to life the legendary traveler twice over, once in his beautiful and startling account of the expedition, and again in his subtle and moving portrait of a contemporary high school teacher trying to write about Lewis. Pritchett's depiction of these two reluctant heroes struggling to reach their destinations makes for an intricate, intelligent and absorbing novel." —Margot Livesey
“Pritchett raises classic questions about the nature of heroism and society's need for (and treatment of) heroes….Bill's disintegrating life, with all its quotidian disappointments and conundrums, is heartbreakingly affecting.” —Publishers Weekly
"Pritchett has achieved something pretty intricate here: He has wrapped the real-life explorer Meriwether Lewis in a contemporary fiction. The tension between past and present, reality and imagination, helps give the book its considerable urgency." —The Kansas City Star
"This is an engrossing read, that draws the reader more deeply into the already well-documented life of Meriwether Lewis than any straight history, and uses this adventure to shed light on the contemporary issues that men face. This is an increasingly rare book, a literary adventure of both action and introspection..." —Rich Rennicks, Malaprop's Bookstore & Café
“High school history teacher Bill Lewis, in the midst of writing a book about explorer Meriwether Lewis, reveals that he shares the historical Lewis's history of depression and madness…fascinated by the finely drawn landscape and hellish adventures of Captain Lewis, morbidly drawn to the downward spiral of his biographer, I read to the end, which was not the end of Bill or of Bill's hope…Bill Lewis glimpses a ray of hope for his sanity, his son and his marriage. The debate about Meriwether Lewis’s cause of death, incidentally, rages on.” —Gina Webb, Tall Tales Bookshop
Michael Pritchett is also the author of an award-winning collection of stories, The Venus Tree. He is the winner of the 2000 Dana Award for a novel-in-progress. His stories have appeared in Passages North, Natural Bridge and New Letters, among other noteworthy magazines. He teaches fiction writing at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
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Unbridled Aloud featuring Michael
Interview by Peter Quinones
CLICK HERE to read the first two chapters of The Melancholy Fate of Capt. Lewis in PDF format!
“One felt responsible for Lewis,” Clark added, taking himself by surprise.
“And wished to be like him and liked by him. Without the help of others, and guidance and temperance, he would perish, one felt fairly sure. He blundered blindly toward great things, and believed you would help him, and e’en depended on’t. He saw possibilities, but also fought back a despair brought on by keen, sensitive perception of the problem and its scope.”
Irving wrote that. They both listened to the clock. “Are you familiar with Gulliver’s Travels?” Irving asked.
“Yes,” Clark said, looking up. “I seem to recall . . . early in our journey . . . “
“. . . those people believed that Gulliver’s watch was his god, because he was constantly checking its face, as if for reassurance,” Irving said.
Clark waited for a point, then understood that that was the whole thing.
“What about the all-water route?” Irving asked.
“For all we know, it is still out there, waiting for discovery. And the Northwest Passage too,” he said.
“Do you truly think that?” Irving asked, pen paused.
“I am not certain that I ever did think it, or that it ever really mattered to me,” he said, looking upward for the answer. “My friend asked me to join him, in triumph or in ruin.”
He was at last pleased by something he had said in the interview, and resolved to end it.
“Or both,” Irving said.
“Or both,” Clark concurred.
“Do you know,” Irving said, “that an angel of the Lord has recently appeared to a man in upper state New York on four separate occasions? And that he has found, buried in the woods, some heretofore unknown books of the Holy Scriptures?”
“In New York?” Clark said. “Well, that sounds unlikely, does it not?”
Irving sat still and stared at the black, waxed floor planks as though he were wishing it to be true, as though he wanted a new faith to go along with his return to the new continent. Clark felt embarrassed, almost as if he had disappointed a younger version of himself. “This new age is confusing,” Clark said. “In a way, one misses the Spanish and the unquestionable right of conquest. Lewis would disagree, but where is he now? Do you see him here or there? When a man speaks too long and loudly for the Enlightenment, it seems the world must kill him.”
Clark was aware of saying things he never ever had, so this must be the last person who would come asking.
“But why?” Irving asked, as if waiting earnestly, erectly, to know.
“Very simply, this must not be the actual world, but something merely painted on its surface,” he said. “Otherwise, life would matter and we would take every measure to preserve it. Instead, we recklessly chance everything. And if not slaughtered that time, we do it again. The notion that life is precious is the greatest lie of our age. What matters are the passions, the thrilling lusts of rage, desire and hatred. Nothing else is actually here.”
Irving was writing quickly, trying to get it, note for note. “Do you have it, then?” Clark asked. “Are we finished?”
“Yes, I believe so . . .”