|
Foreword
In November 1928, one year after
Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic, a pair of newlyweds
set out to run the rapids of the Grand Canyon in a
homemade boat. Swept up by America's obsession with
feats of daring, Glen and Bessie Hyde hoped to set
a record—she would be the first woman to run that
treacherous stretch of the Colorado River. A month
later they vanished without a trace.
Based on the few known facts of Bessie and Glen Hyde's
story, Grand Ambition is an account of the
young lovers' journey, deftly braided with Glen's
father's desperate efforts to find them. Written in
lean and elegant prose, Grand Ambition is a
tale of riveting suspense.
In her author's statement, Lisa Michaels explains
her interest in writing a novel based on the Hydes'
expedition: "I first read the story of Glen and Bessie
Hyde in a history book. Their photograph, reproduced
within the brief chapter, stopped me short: they were
young and striking, wearing wool fedoras, bomber jackets
with fur collars. The known facts of their story were
scant and unsatisfying, but, from a writer's perspective,
this seemed like a blessing. William Styron once said
that historical novelists do best with 'thin rations.'
And so where history left off, I decided to begin.
"The story of the Hydes' river journey seemed to give
me the chance to examine both sides of an equation:
the thrill of holding one's life into the wind, and
the torturous worry of those left at home. The push
and pull between caution and risk, parents and children,
is universal. But doing research for Grand Ambition,
I also came to believe that the craving for adventure
waxes in certain times. Reading newspapers from the
1920s, I was struck between the parallels between
that era and the present: both boom times, with enormous
fortunes being made on the stock market. Both times
of relative peace. We all claim to want peace and
prosperity. But there's a kind of person who can't
stand this dulling of the fight or flight reflexes.
And to keep these instincts sharp, they dream up feats
of daring. In the 1920s we had Lindbergh flying solo
across the Atlantic, and Trudy Ederle, an eighteen-year-old
girl, swimming the English Channel. The newspapers
of the Jazz Age were full of breathless accounts of
this society woman's 'adventurous honeymoon' barnstorming
with her new husband, or that Arctic expedition. And
today we have bungee jumping, 'Survivor', middle-aged
accountants scaling peaks. It seems that when life
is easy, people will make a hobby out of making it
hard.
"Had Glen and Bessie Hyde been alive today, I imagine
they might have tried to climb Mount Everest or race
a hot-air balloon around the world. For myself, I
have decided that I would rather read about adventure,
or imagine it from the safety of a book-lined room."
Discussion
Questions
1. Why were Glen and Bessie Hyde drawn to one another?
Shortly after she met Glen, Bessie claimed "she could
already see how it would be: she would live through
his courage, just as he would live in her inventiveness,
her emotion." Did this turn out to be true? How important
was the river journey to their marriage?
2. What were Bessie's reasons for going down the river?
How did those reasons change as the trip wore on?
3. Throughout Grand Ambition, the narrative
of Glen and Bessie Hyde is interspersed with the first-person
narrative of Reith Hyde. Reith's observations on the
young couple provide a different but comparably revealing
perspective on their story. Bessie's father is also
an important character in the novel. How might he
have told the story of Glen and Bessie's adventures
together?
4. How does Grand Ambition fit into the American
tradition of novels about the West? Lisa Michaels
is one among many contemporary writers who have explored
to the history of the West and its place in the American
imagination through fictionalized accounts of its
uncharted days. How does her vision compare with that
of Wallace Stegner or Cormac McCarthy? What does it
hold in common with earlier writers such as Willa
Cather and Jack London?
5. Bessie Hyde was undoubtedly an extraordinary woman.
How does she stand out from the other female characters
in the novel? How was she unusual among American women
in the 1920s? In what ways was she more typical than
her ambition suggests?
6. What larger truths does Lisa Michaels' novel illustrate
about fame as a motivation? What relevance does the
fate of Glen and Bessie Hyde have to the American
imagination today? Is this a particularly American
story?
7. Is there any purpose to the kind of feats of daring
that Glen and Bessie were attempting? Bessie hoped
that "there was a girl out there, awake at her bedroom
window, looking over a smug little town, who might
take something from her story." Is this her main motivation
for making the trip?
8. Why did Bessie think she had to do the things that
frightened her?
9. How do issues of class enter into Grand Ambition?
Would Glen and Bessie Hyde have pursued their dream
had they come from a different class background? What
might they have done differently?
10. Why did Lisa Michaels choose to alternate stories
from the first-person perspective of Reith Hyde with
the narrative of the young couple told in the third
person?
11. Do you think Glen and Bessie would have attempted
this trip during World War I or the Great Depression?
In what way was their adventure the product of the
time in which they lived?
12. Do you fault Reith Hyde for not trying to stop
his son from attempting this trip? Did you identify
more with Glen's confidence or Reith's caution?
13. What role does visual and written testimony play
in the story of Glen and Bessie Hyde?
14. Superficially Bessie and Greta Grandstedt had
little in common, yet Greta seems to be the only woman
Bessie relates to in the novel. What did they see
in one another?
Praise
for Grand Ambition
"[Michaels] creates a story that is at once a literary
travelogue, and Indiana Jones adventure, a portrait
of a marriage, and a sketch of a man. The result is
a treasure. There is never a false note in this novel,
never an inflated sentence, only voices perfectly
pitched to character, descriptions resolutely true
to place, and a sublime sense of pacing." —Booklist
"An absolutely gorgeous, spellbinding narrative; a
golden key to a lost world."—Carolyn See
"Lisa Michaels's powerful, deep project is to dramatize
the contemplation of history. For we all will disappear,
and the survivors of some of us will stare down at
the dark, impenetrable waters into which we have vanished,
and they will wonder who and how we were as time took
us under. That is the strong effect of this compelling
novel about courage, love, and loss."—Frederick
Busch
"A stunning book of refined lyricism. The story is
so perfectly paced, a melancholy sense of the inexorable
grabbed me from the first page."—Bernard Cooper
"Grand Ambition fulfills the promise of its
title. It is an intensely felt novel about the intersection
of human love and indifferent nature told in exquisite
prose." —Jill Ciment
|