O America: Discovery in a New Land

by William Least Heat-Moon

In 1848 an English physician, Nathaniel Trennant, accepts an offer to serve as doctor on a ship carrying immigrants to America. When arriving in Baltimore, Trennant stumbles onto its slave market and witnesses the horrors of human bondage. One night in a boardinghouse he discovers under his bed a runaway slave. Disturbed and angered by the selling of human lives, he offers to help the young man escape, a criminal action that will put the fugitive slave and physician into flight from both the law and opportunistic slave hunters.Traveling by foot, horse, stage, canal boat, and steamer, Nathaniel and Nicodemus explore the backcountry and forge a deep friendship as they encounter a host of memorable characters who reveal the nature of the American experiment, one still in its early stages but already under the stress of social injustices and economic inequities. 

Genres: Fiction, Travel

345 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 14, 2020

About the author

From wikipedia:

William Least Heat-Moon, byname of William Trogdon is an American travel writer of English, Irish and Osage Nation ancestry. He is the author of a bestselling trilogy of topographical U.S. travel writing.

His pen name came from his father saying, "I call myself Heat Moon, your elder brother is Little Heat Moon. You, coming last, therefore, are Least." Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Heat-Moon attended the University of Missouri where he earned bachelor's, master's, and Ph.D. degrees in English, as well as a bachelor's degree in photojournalism. He also served as a professor of English at the university.

Reviews

[Will Plunkett · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a Swiss Army Knife of books: you get more than you expected as you open up yet another useful feature. Based on his writing reputation: you get a geography/history book that travels with the reader and not just a here-to-there account; less maps than usual, though. There is parallel commentary set in mid 19th-century America actually speaking of the 20th- and 21st-century world and America (not the only comparison with Twain's style and his books' locales). Word play and references abound (even some of his previous book titles), including many current phrases somewhat anachronistically written in his protagonist's journal. And a suspenseful will-they? will-he? will-she? plot that holds up throughout.

[Dave Osborne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps the most enjoyable book I’ve read in 2020. I was familiar with William Least Heat-Moon’s 1991 book PrairyErth, set in the Flint Hills of Kansas, but none of his other travel/history books since that one. The story of O America is set in first-person narration, through the travel notes of fictional Dr. Nathaniel Trennant, an 1836 medical graduate of Cambridge University. Dr. Trennant’s collection of travel notes is entitled “My American Excursion to the Buffalo Prairies: The Logbooks of a Physician.”
Dr. Trennant’s 1848 exploration from England into Middle America traverses waterways: Atlantic Ocean, Erie Canal, Allegheny River, Ohio River, Mississippi River, and Missouri River. Least Heat-Moon, pen name of Willian Trogdon, who lives in Missouri, provides remarkable details of all the vessels and the voyages. The reader will encounter carefully researched detailed esoteric names of the parts of the vessels.
While the waterway and surrounding regions provide the geography of this novel, Dr Tennant’s “American experience” is shaped by the persons he encounters through his five months of travel: slave and free, wealthy and poor, oppressed and oppressors. His companionship with a fleeing slave, his friendship with a female Polish immigrant, and his encounter with an Osage Native American chief provide the context for his observations of the “American experiment.”
The author’s clever use of Dr. Tennant’s observations portend the Civil War. But, strikingly, this fictional character’s observations of 1848 also portend our U.S. society of 2020. While Dr Tennant’s notes are penned for 1848, William Least Heat-Moon’s novel is penned for 2020. The reader is challenged to consider the current nature of the “American experiment.”

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

"O America: Discovery in a New Land" is a different approach to a travel book. Usually, travel books are written by someone describing who and what they encounter as they travel on a journey and as they stop to experience places and people along the way. Some are serious, some add humor, some are philosophical, but most add information to greatly increase the readers understanding and second-hand experience of the places visited. Some are set in modern contemporary times (Bryson, McMurtry, Heat-Moon), and others were written in the past about past experiences (Steinbeck, Mark Twain). What makes this account unique among the travel books i've read is that this is written in the present as historical fiction, narrated by a traveler displaced in time from the author. In this case, the time is 1848 and the traveler is a Caribbean born British physician visiting and exploring 1848 America for the first time. For me, it is a refreshing approach to visiting an America of our past, looking on it as an outsider, somewhat objectively. The adventure is rich, but ended too soon. This could have been a book 2-3 times longer, and still been engaging and rich. I enjoyed reading it.

[Kyle Berry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heat-Moon weaves so many callbacks and memories from his previous travel books into this poignant novel. To me, this book is a love letter to his loyal fans he once called a “secret society”. Why call them a secret society? Heat-Moon never dumbed down his writing in the hopes of achieving mass appeal. He used the words that did the stories - and the places and people in them - justice. Many times I have had to set one of his books down and look up a word or two. His word usage gave the stories so much more richness and depth. It takes some work on the reader’s part, but it is always rewarded.

Dr. Trennant comes to America to see the budding American Experiment, but finds more than he could have ever hoped for. It’s a very worthy read, though reading his previous books like “Blue Highways”, “River-Horse”, “Prairy Erth”, and “Roads to Quoz” will add layer upon layer of depth.

[Tony Laplume · Rating 3 out of 5]

The central conceit of Heat-Moon’s second foray into fiction is strained considerably. This particular reader thought excessively so. Too ambitious for the writer? Ends up feeling like his assessment of the present day via a thin veneer of the past. His fictional protagonists (and their antagonist, a cartoonish element much in foreboding but, spoiler alert, easily dispatched) are equally thinly sketched, leaving too little hanging loose on the line. If this were a beer, it might be a craft beer on its way to justifying itself. Ha. There. That’s the story this should have been. A historic sketch of brewing in 19th century America. Accomplished the same, better.

[Alison Petchell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was searching for another of Heat-Moon’s books - Kramer’s didn’t have it but they had this and the story sounded like fun. He writes so beautifully that initially I was both delighted and enthralled. But half way through I lost all motivation. This really is just a series of well written anecdotes strung together but I pushed through to the end and ultimately enjoyed the narrators observations of an emerging nation. Spoiler alert - the love interest is neither requited nor unrequited so don’t invest any emotional energy in it

[Don Kent · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a tale about a English MD that saves and shelters a Negro fugitive slave in the 1840's. While it is likely a plausible tale, the author's attempt to imitate the writing style of mid nineteenth century detracts significantly from any pleasure I found in reading the book.

[Qhenn Manns · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love almost everything written by WLHM, and this one is the shiniest penny of them all. Well, not exceeding Blue Highways, but this is fiction and that wasn’t. This is very lyrical and engaging. I will reread it in a few years, and enjoy it more.

[Sis Lindley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rich in language in the form of journals by a visiting English physician of what he sees as the American experiment of democracy during 1848.