I SHOULD BE EXTREMELY HAPPY IN YOUR COMPANY
Selected as one of the best novels of the year by The Boston Globe, Salon Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, and The Christian Science Monitor.
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s expedition to the Pacific Ocean and back in the early nineteenth century is the most famous in American history. But its public image of discovery and triumphant return has veiled its private stories of longing and loss, of self-discovery and mutual ignorance, of good luck and mischance.
Ever present as a backdrop in Brian Hall’s compulsively readable novel is the violent collision of white and Native American cultures, and the broader tragedy of the inability of any human being to truly understand what lies in the heart of another. The story unfolds through the perspectives of four competing voices—from the troubled and mercurial 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 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 provides a new perspective on a legendary American journey.
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Praise for I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company
“Hall’s magnum opus of a historical novel makes hugely enterprising use of firsthand accounts of the pioneering journey. . . Fascinating, multifaceted.”
—The New York Times
“Artful layering and flawless pacing transform a monolithic legend into a quixotic, heartbreaking story, one you enter rather than salute.”
—The Boston Globe
“Fills in the blank pages of the Lewis and Clark journals, offering marvelous character studies . . . A seamless narrative flow earmarks this hybrid book as approaching the status of classic American literature.”
—The Los Angeles Times
“The greatest pleasure of this novel stems from the way Hall portrays his principals, distinguishing not just their voices, but their startlingly different visions of a world in rapid flux . . . Sacagawea’s surreal vision of a world blended with native myth and tribal history provides the novel’s most haunting moments.”
—The Christian Science Monitor
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