Cover Design: Kathy Haasch.
Cover Credits: Henry David Thoreau, Abigail Rorer; Walden Tracks, Corinne H. Smith.
|
Westward I Go Free:
Tracing Thoreau's Last Journey
By Corinne Hosfeld Smith
With a Foreword by Laura Dassow Walls
Published in 2012 by Green Frigate Press
ISBN 978-1927043301
460-page paperback $28.95
In 1861, Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
embarked on a “Journey West” with
Horace
Mann, Jr. The duo used railroads and
riverboats to travel from Massachusetts to
Minnesota and back. The details of this last,
longest, and least-known of Thoreau’s
excursions has been veiled in mystery …
until now.
Westward I Go Free is the story of
two 19th-century men and the 21st-century
woman who was determined
to follow
their 4,000+-mile path.
|
Pre-order now through
Amazon,
Barnes and Noble,
or
the
Thoreau Society Shop at Walden Pond.
(Booksellers can order through
IPG.)
Advance praise for Westward I Go Free:
"Anyone interested in Henry David Thoreau, and especially those of us who
mourn for the book he might have written about his late-in-life journey to
the Midwest, will be grateful for Westward I Go Free. Meticulously
researched, brimming with energy and wit, it admirably fills an omission
that previous biographies have been content to skip over." ~ Jerry Dennis, author of
The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart
of the Inland Seas
"Since Thoreau never wrote or lectured about the many wonderful people and
scenes he encountered, this excursion's exposure has been limited for a century
and a half. Now scholar Corinne H. Smith has illuminated his 'Journey West.'
In her superbly written and researched book, she takes us to the places where
Thoreau went and describes them, then and now. In addition, she enriches each
segment of their trip with her own 'Thoreauvian adventure,' which reveals
fascinating connections with Thoreau and others. ... Corinne Smith's insightful,
moving, and inspiring account of Thoreau's 'Journey West' is a great pleasure to
read and a most significant contribution to our understanding of the author of
Walden." ~ J. Parker Huber, author of
The
Wildest Country: Exploring Thoreau's Maine
"Tracing Henry David Thoreau's longest, last, and least-known journey from his
home in Concord, Massachusetts to Minnesota, Corinne H. Smith has woven a
complex tapestry of history, biography and acute observation that would delight
the sage of Walden Pond. In joining Thoreau's 1861 trip to her
contemporary travels on the same route, Smith becomes a true 'deep traveler:'
not a tourist merely, but an explorer. Along the way, readers will not only get
to know Thoreau and his young companion, Horace Mann, but such diverse
characters as U.S. Grant, John Muir, Frank Lloyd Wright and a 20th-century
Canadian artist bearing the first name Thoreau. ... Packed with facts and astute
perceptions, this is a book Thoreau would have eagerly devoured.
~ David K. Leff, author of Deep
Travel: In Thoreau's Wake on the Concord and Merrimack
