Cheryl's Book Nook

What would someone like Princess Diana have accomplished if she had been given more time?   I always wondered that about explorer Meriwether Lewis, of Lewis & Clark fame. He accomplished more than many people manage in a full lifetime, all to be cut down by two gunshots on the Natchez Trace at the age of 35.    Historians are divided about whether Lewis ’ s death was suicide or murder. The United States government classifies it as ‘mysterious.’   Still.   A famous explorer dies alone in the early hours of October 11, 1809, wounded in the head and the abdomen. He is buried in a shallow, unmarked grave for almost 50 years. Although he is a federal employee on government business, no federal investigation of his death is conducted. He is forgotten until 1848, when the state of Tennessee moved his body and erected a marker to honor him. My novel is partially an attempt to give Lewis more time, to craft a different ending for a life th...

Publication Date: March 1, 2014 World Hermit Press Paperback; 310p ISBN-10: 0615937470 eBook; ASIN: B00IA0MWMQ Purchase on Amazon here   Is remembrance immortality? Nobody wants to be forgotten, least of all the famous. Meriwether Lewis lived a memorable life. He and William Clark were the first white men to reach the Pacific in their failed attempt to discover a Northwest Passage. Much celebrated upon their return, Lewis was appointed governor of the vast Upper Louisiana Territory and began preparing his eagerly-anticipated journals for publication. But his re-entry into society proved as challenging as his journey. Battling financial and psychological demons and faced with mounting pressure from Washington, Lewis set out on a pivotal trip to the nation’s capital in September 1809. His mission: to publish his journals and salvage his political career. He never made it. He died in a roadside inn on the Natchez Trace in Tennessee from one gunshot to the head a...