THE GOOD JOURNEY

Based on archival letters of Mary Bullitt and military studies of her husband, Gen. Henry Atkinson, this ambitiously researched, gracefully narrated first novel by lawyer and law professor Gilchrist traces an exciting time during the Black Hawk wars of the mid-19th century on the Missouri prairie and has already been optioned for a film. After only three days of courtship, the notoriously difficult Louisville belle marries the autocratic older general and for the next 16 years they make their home at the unpromising outpost of Jefferson Barracks, Mo., where he is stationed to enforce federal Indian regulations. These include trying to keep the Sauk, led by the proud, relentless Black Hawk, pacified, while at the same time taking their land. There is also a personal vendetta to settle between General Atkinson and Black Hawk, involving murders each man had committed, and the novel, related in flashbacks by the recently widowed, outspoken Mary, becomes her attempt finally to understand her emotionally remote husband. Her story is told by stages and dated in a diary, as Mary grows from new bride to young mother to maturing woman, always reflecting on her volatile relationship with her husband as he, in turn, is altered by the pursuit of his nemesis. Gilchrist incorporates first-person accounts by tertiary characters such as Bright Sun, the general's Indian interpreter and possible romantic admirer, and Mary's young cousin Philip, both of whom accompany the general on his campaigns. Characters are fleshed out to the smallest detail, from the physical torments of soldiers in the field to Black Hawk's stuttering fury. Gilchrist has managed to create a work that is both historically riveting in the manner of 18th-century captivity narratives and as deft in the depiction of a beleaguered marriage as C.S. Godshalk's Kalimantaan. (July)