history

Around the Bend, by Lisa G. Dill

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The title is slang for being crazy, and that’s how most people described Lisa Dill’s decision to go, as the subtitle says, Floating Down the Missouri River.

We don’t hear much about the Missouri, despite it being the longest river in the U.S. and one of the most dangerous. There’s the folksong Oh, Shenandoah (another river) with its refrain: “Away, we’re bound away, / Across the wide Missouri.” I’ve read stories set on the Platte, which is a tributary of the Missouri, and of course many stories set on the river it runs into: the Mississippi. Writers like Mark Twain and William Faulkner filled my imagination, enhancing childhood experiences of the Mighty Mississippi such as the night I spent on the Delta Queen, a sternwheel steamboat.

So I welcomed the chance to learn more about the Missouri. It runs from southern Montana through the Dakotas, between Iowa and Nebraska, along Kansas and into Missouri before emptying into the Mississippi. Along the way it gathers strength, not just from the Platte, but also from the Yellowstone River, the Big Sioux River, and many others.

Although she is a college professor in Delaware, Dill has family in Iowa. When she found that four of her mother’s cousins had decided to take their 40-year-old pontoon boat down the river from Sioux City, Iowa, to St. Louis, Missouri, where they would sell it, she jumped at the chance to join them.

True, the somewhat rickety boat was more suited to the lake where they’d always used it than to the powerful Missouri. But two weeks on their old FloteBote would give her a chance to get to know both the cousins and the river.

The book, recommended by the person who gave me Brave the Wild River about two women who paddled down the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, surprised me by how it held my attention. Dill uses all of our senses to help us share the experience while also exploring some aspect of the Missouri River’s history, ecology, climate, geography, and role in the economy.

There are a few setbacks, like the engine not starting on the first day, and some alarming near misses, but for the most part the pace reflects the rolling of the river. My interest never wavered, and I read the book straight through. The tales Dill tells of recent floods and long-ago explorations, of attempts to tame the river and those who live near it, all provide plenty of drama.

Another reason it’s such a pleasure to read is simply how well Dill writes. Her sentences are clear and varied. They lead one into another in an easy, conversational way that must have been difficult to achieve so consistently. She’s simply an interesting person to hang out with for a while. Also, conversations with the cousins and with people they meet when they tie up for the evening pepper the story, providing a little variety.

Most important of all is the way she structures chapters to be a good balance of her personal experience and information that helps us better understand what we’re experiencing. Even complex information goes down easily; it’s hard not to be interested in such details. In a blog post, Dill writes:

I worked as hard as I could to create transitions, to figure out ways to move gracefully from the complexity of underwater engineering, flood data, and endangered species I hadn’t seen to the experience of sailing what one relative called “elderly flotsam” down the longest river on the continent. I sifted through mountains of research, looking for not just the important historical facts and scientific data, but for ways to connect it to the story of the trip, the story of my family, the story of the 40-year-old pontoon boat that somehow survived 750 miles on the Missouri River intact.

These transitions and connections are what make the story so engaging. I learned a lot about the Missouri, from the number of wrecked steamboats still never recovered to the ongoing attempts to rein in the river’s wanderings. These days I live where a large river joins an even larger river. The Abenaki called the area Wantastegok which means “at the place of the lost river.” We’ve suffered floods and droughts in recent years, so much of the story here resonated with me.

Also, as Dill points out, rivers hold a fascination for cultures all over the world, Often sacred and sometimes symbolic of eternal truths, rivers are as romantic and powerful a part of the landscape of our lives as oceans and mountains.

And then there’s the joy of embarking on a mad adventure like taking an old FloteBote down the river to where it ends.

What do you know about the Missouri River? What mad adventures would you like to undertake?

The Normans: From Raiders to Kings, by Lars Brownworth

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I’ve recently taken a little detour into the Middle Ages, starting with Helen Hollick’s The Kingmaking, a well-researched novel about Arthur Pendragon’s rise to power in 5th century Britain. Then I jumped ahead to the 12th-15th centuries, viewing a four-part series hosted by historian Dan Jones called Britain’s Bloodiest Dynasty: The Plantagenets.

I also read Judith Merkle Riley’s witty novel, The Master of All Desires, about a young woman who finds herself at the center of Queen Catherine de Medici’s intrigues at the French Court and looks to the Queen’s Astrologer, Nostradamus, for advice. The story is set in the 16th century, thus putting it over the historians’ line and into the Renaissance, although the reliance on seers and spells seems more apt for the Middle Ages.

Finally I tackled this book on the Normans, set in the 11th and 12th centuries. It is relatively short at a little over 200 pages and immensely readable. Maps, family trees, descriptive lists of people and places, and endnotes explaining possibly unfamiliar terms, make this history accessible for a reader with little or no foreknowledge while not boring one who knows quite a bit about the Normans already.

I knew that the Normans who invaded Britain came from—surprise!—Normandy and were descended from Viking raiders who’d settled there in the 9th and 10th centuries. I knew about the Battle of Hastings and have my list of English monarchs well situated in memory.

What I didn’t know was that the Normans played a huge role in the rest of Europe, creating kingdoms as far south as North Africa, going on crusades, and taking on the Papal States, the Holy Roman Empire (aka the German Empire) and the Byzantine Empire. And that much of that was accomplished by members of a single family, the de Hautevilles.

The question Brownworth sets out to answer is: “How did Western Europe, which was militarily, technologically, and socially far behind its immediate neighbors in the Middle East, manage not only to catch up with them, but to rise to global dominance?”

He finds much of the answer in the Normans. Without downplaying their ruthless suppression of local languages and customs, he does explain how they eventually assimilated with their conquered peoples. While some of the Normans he describes were warriors first and last, others actually found creative ways to govern, becoming respected and even beloved.

Still, the net result for me of all this reading and viewing was a sickening sense of the brevity of life in the Middle Ages, not only for the conquered peasantry and the waves of warriors thrown at various foes, but for the rulers themselves. Intrigue is too mild a word for the fostering of revolts in a brother’s country, the poisonings and outright murders. And then there were the frail, inbred children placed on thrones, controlled or fought over by power-hungry nobles.

None of this was new to me, but the span of this little detour of mine showed how prevalent it was. Yet another person murdering all of his brothers to gain a throne, in turn murdered by another claimant. Over and over.

In this season of the U.S. presidential election, a time I loathe, one that has me avoiding the saturated media, I actually found the slaughter of the Middle Ages comforting. Yes, the airwaves are dominated by amoral pretenders, each trying to stir up more hatred than the next, making the U.S. a laughingstock in the international arena where people cannot believe such clowns could even be considered for office. But at least they are not killing each other. At least they are not cooking up charges to have each other’s entrails dragged out or having their opponents beheaded or poisoned or burned at the stake. And this season, at least, there are a few who are refraining from even verbal attacks in favor of—shocking as it may be—a discussion of the issues.

I will take comfort where I can find it.

What do you know of the Normans’ involvement in the Crusades?