Grand Ambition Book

In Lisa Michaels' enthralling debut novel Grand Ambition she delineates the tale of two young newlyweds Glen and Bessie Hyde who, in pre-Depression America, attempt to run the rapids on the Grand Canyon in a homemade boat. Loosely based on a true story, the pair hope to set a record--Bessie will be the first woman to successfully negotiate this stretch of the Colorado River and both will win fame and fortune. When they fail to appear at their destination on time, Glen's father Reith sets off in search of them, and much of the novel deftly weaves Glen and Bessie's experiences riding the rapids with Reith's desperate attempts to locate them before it's too late. The novel works well as an elegantly written adventure story imbued with genuine suspense but Michaels' ambition also extends beyond these confines: she succeeds in capturing the zeitgeist of a swaggeringly confident America, before the Wall Street crash, when anything still seemed possible. Charles Lindbergh has just made the first solo flight across the Atlantic, and the American appetite for pioneering feats of daring is insatiable. It marks the point where the American West becomes an arena for recreation and pleasure, rather than a wild, inhospitable land to be tamed by the kind of European immigrants portrayed in novels such as Willa Cather's O Pioneers!. While Reith still struggles to chisel out a living on his farm, the land now means something entirely different to the younger generation, and Bessie, as a woman in a domain usually reserved for men, is a very different kind of pioneer. However, just as the early pioneers were impervious to the dark, unknowable power of the landscape and to the value of the indigenous cultures within it, so Glen and Bessie underestimate the hardships they are to encounter. As the trip progresses and the perils become greater, there is a creeping sense of their own mortality. At once a moving love story and a thrilling adventure, Grand Ambition contemplates our need for risk and danger, and ponders the correct way to best honour and value the freedom we've been given--whether we should be cautious and do all we can to preserve our life, or live it to the full and risk losing it prematurely: "He thought their trip would come out all right because it was bold. He had faith in boldness. It took a lot to snuff out a life." --Jane MorrisRead More