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I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company

A Novel of Lewis and Clark

Author Brian Hall
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Paperback
$17.00 US
5.45"W x 8.37"H x 0.9"D   | 13 oz | 32 per carton
On sale Dec 30, 2003 | 432 Pages | 9780142003718

A sweeping, gorgeously written novel of Lewis and Clark's legendary expedition, named one of the best novels of the year by The Boston Globe, Salon, The Los Angeles Times, and The Christian Science Monitor.

Brian Hall’s compulsively readable novel vividly re-creates Lewis and Clark’s extraordinary journey into the unknown western frontier. Focusing on the emblematic moments of the participants’ lives, the story unfolds through the perspectives of four competing voices—from the troubled and mercurial figure of Meriwether Lewis, the expedition leader who found that it was impossible to enter paradise without having it crumble around him, to Sacagawea, the Shoshone girl-captive and interpreter for the expedition, whose short life mirrored the disruptive times in which she lived. Bringing the day-to-day life of the expedition alive as no work of history ever could, Hall’s magnificent novel fills in the gaps and provides a new perspective on the most famous journey in American history.
  • WINNER
    Spur Awards
“Artful layering and flawless pacing transform a monolithic legend into a quixotic, heartbreaking story, one you enter rather than salute.” —The Boston Globe
“Hall, a spellbinding prose stylist, writes with the kind of ethereal poetic sweep found in the historical novels of Michael Ondaatje and Wallace Stegner.” —Los Angeles Times
“Fascinating, multifaceted . . . Hall’s magnum opus of a historical novel makes hugely enterprising use of firsthand accounts of the pioneering journey.” —The New York Times
© Lawrence Kim

Brian Hall is the author of the novels The DreamersThe SaskiadFall of Frost, and I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company, in addition to three works of nonfiction, including The Impossible Country: A Journey Through the Last Days of Yugoslavia and Madeleine's World. His journalism has appeared in publications such as TimeThe New Yorker, and The New York Times Magazine. He lives in Ithaca, New York.

View titles by Brian Hall

About

A sweeping, gorgeously written novel of Lewis and Clark's legendary expedition, named one of the best novels of the year by The Boston Globe, Salon, The Los Angeles Times, and The Christian Science Monitor.

Brian Hall’s compulsively readable novel vividly re-creates Lewis and Clark’s extraordinary journey into the unknown western frontier. Focusing on the emblematic moments of the participants’ lives, the story unfolds through the perspectives of four competing voices—from the troubled and mercurial figure of Meriwether Lewis, the expedition leader who found that it was impossible to enter paradise without having it crumble around him, to Sacagawea, the Shoshone girl-captive and interpreter for the expedition, whose short life mirrored the disruptive times in which she lived. Bringing the day-to-day life of the expedition alive as no work of history ever could, Hall’s magnificent novel fills in the gaps and provides a new perspective on the most famous journey in American history.

Awards

  • WINNER
    Spur Awards

Praise

“Artful layering and flawless pacing transform a monolithic legend into a quixotic, heartbreaking story, one you enter rather than salute.” —The Boston Globe
“Hall, a spellbinding prose stylist, writes with the kind of ethereal poetic sweep found in the historical novels of Michael Ondaatje and Wallace Stegner.” —Los Angeles Times
“Fascinating, multifaceted . . . Hall’s magnum opus of a historical novel makes hugely enterprising use of firsthand accounts of the pioneering journey.” —The New York Times

Author

© Lawrence Kim

Brian Hall is the author of the novels The DreamersThe SaskiadFall of Frost, and I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company, in addition to three works of nonfiction, including The Impossible Country: A Journey Through the Last Days of Yugoslavia and Madeleine's World. His journalism has appeared in publications such as TimeThe New Yorker, and The New York Times Magazine. He lives in Ithaca, New York.

View titles by Brian Hall