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Title: Grand Ambition: A Novel by Lisa Michaels ISBN: 0-393-32295-5 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: April, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.7 (10 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Thoroughly Captivating!
Comment: Grand Ambition is a story of fact and fiction woven together masterfully into a beautiful, honest portrayal of love and adventure. Lisa Michael's captures the awesome majesty of the Grand Canyon so completely I felt that I was with Bessie and Glen Hyde as they navigated their way down the Colorado. Despite knowing that they never achieve their "Grand Ambition," I was completely engrossed in seeing the newlyweds safely through each new hurdle. I loved this book so much I bought several more copies to give as presents and have told many others about it.
Rating: 5
Summary: Gripping and beautfully written!
Comment: I've long admired the work of Lisa Michaels (Split: A Counterculture Childhood). This book, about the doomed trip of Bessie and Glen Hyde down the Colorado River in a home-made boat, could be called a real page turner except one wants to linger over the gorgeous sentences describing the Grand Canyon and the wild rapids. The novel richly paints an intimate portrait of two young people striving for a charmed life. If this novel doesn't garner some literary prize, the judges aren't paying close attention to the emergence of a very gifted writer.
Rating: 5
Summary: Man vs. Nature: Legend or Folly?
Comment: Based on an intriguing premise, Grand Ambition is a novel I wanted to savor. But I couldn't, because once I started, I found myself turning the pages compulsively. This is a story that spawned it's own urban legends for more than 70 years. Newlyweds Glen and Bessie Hyde spend their honeymoon in 1928 shooting the rapids through the Grand Canyon on a scow designed by Glen, who has dreamed of this journey. Although Bessie has no experience, she has great enthusiasm and a willingness to take a bite out of what life has to offer her. They hope to set a record for speed, but if not that, then Bessie will be the first woman to successfully shoot the rapids. After the trip, they plan to lecture and write a book describing the adventure, using Bessie's skills as an artist to illustrate their story.
But something goes wrong. After a last sighting, the couple are never seen or heard from again. Glen's father, Hyde Sr., launches a rescue effort to discover the fate of his son and daughter-in-law, hoping to find them still alive. Mr. Hyde contacts everyone who has had contact with the young couple and religiously follows up every clue. When their scow is found floating lose with all necessary supplies still on board, the obvious becomes more and more ominous.
Michaels alternates chapters between the events as they happen to Bessie and Glen and the desperate rescue attempt by Glen's father, with a tension seesawing between hope and despair. The character of Bessie is finely tuned, her youth ultimately allowing fear to overshadow her expectations that Glen can really keep her safe on this increasingly terrifying dance over the whitecaps. Has Bessie put too much faith in Glen's strengths rather than her own? What if Glen, for all his brave posturing, is wrong?
The terrible truth is there from the beginning, but Michaels' characters, particularly Bessie and her father-in-law, are so courageous, so full of spirit, that the final pages come too soon. So little is really known about this couple and their fate that the author gives them voice and dreams, even those that shatter.
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Title: Sunk Without a Sound : The Tragic Colorado River Honeymoon of Glen and Bessie Hyde by Brad Dimock ISBN: 1892327988 Publisher: Fretwater Press Pub. Date: 21 February, 2001 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: Split: A Counterculture Childhood by Lisa Michaels ISBN: 0395957885 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon by Michael P. Ghiglieri, Thomas M. Myers ISBN: 097009731X Publisher: Puma Press LLC Pub. Date: 25 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling by Ross King ISBN: 0142003697 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 25 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Bel Canto: A Novel by Ann Patchett ISBN: 0060934417 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 16 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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