Blurb

Desperate to escape a mundane future as a Virginia planter’s wife, Julia Hancock seizes her chance for adventure when she wins the heart of American hero William Clark. Though her husband is the famed explorer, Julia embarks on her own thrilling and perilous journey of self-discovery.

With her gaze ever westward, Julia possesses a hunger for knowledge and a passion for helping others. She falls in love with Will’s strength and generous manner, but, like her parents, he is a slave owner, and Julia harbors strong opinions against slavery. Still, her love for Will wins out, though he remains unaware of her beliefs.

Julia finds St. Louis to be a rough town with few of the luxuries to which she is accustomed, harboring scandalous politicians and miscreants of all types. As her husband and his best friend, Meriwether Lewis, work to establish an American government and plan to publish their highly anticipated memoirs, Julia struggles to assume the roles of both wife and mother. She is also drawn into the plight of an Indian family desperate to return to their own lands and becomes an advocate for Will’s enslaved.

When political rivals cause trouble, Julia’s clandestine aid to the Indians and enslaved of St. Louis draws unwanted attention, placing her at odds with her husband. Danger cloaks itself in far too many ways, leading her to embrace the courage to save herself and others through a challenge of forgiveness that will either restore the love she shares with Will or end it forever.

Review

West of Santillane by Brook Allen is a beautifully written novel that draws from history’s shadows a woman known to many only as a name, the wife of explore William Clark. Brook Allen brings Julia Hancock to vivid life as a cultured woman of strength and of character.

The first chapter of the novel, where Julia meets a red-headed stranger who will change the course of her life, is a feast for the senses capturing the sights, sounds and scents of a summer’s day in Virginia in 1801. Julia is presented as a daring, exuberant and intelligent nine year old, already pushing at constraints laid on her by the society she lives in. Yet she is also thoughtful, coming to understand, through the treatment of her enslaved young friends, the cruelty and injustice of the system of enslavement that her family has prospered from.

Julia’s insight develops as she matures, and the novel shows the way women, within the limits set on them by their society, could try to ameliorate the worst excesses of slavery and offer some comfort to those enslaved people within their households and, in Julia’s case, even friendship.

The bulk of the novel follows Julia’s life from the prelude to her engagement to William Clark to her visit to her parents, four years later, as an established wife and mother. The challenges faced by Julia along the way are clearly shown, not only within her marriage but in her journey westward from the elegant society of Fincastle to the, at that stage, rude frontier society of St Louis. The joys and sorrows of Julia’s relationship with Meriwether Lewis, William Clark’s friend and fellow explorer, are also sympathetically explored. The novel is underpinned by a solid understanding of the period and the workings of society at this time, both its achievements and its failings.

At heart, West of Santillane is a heart-felt tribute to Julia, and the women like her, who left behind ordered, comfortable lives and, alongside their husbands and families, settled the American frontier.