Escalante’s Dream: On the Trail of the Spanish Discovery of the Southwest

In this somewhat disappointing entry, adventure writer Roberts (The Mountain of My Fear) describes a six-week journey that he and his wife made through Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, intending to follow in the footsteps of two 18th-century Spanish friars. In 1776, Silvestre Velez de Escalante and Francisco Atanasio Dominguez undertook an expedition across North America, at the command of the viceroy of Mexico, in the hopes of developing trade routes and winning converts to Catholicism. Roberts planned to traverse the route laid out in Escalante’s diary, but the limitations of the now-75-year-old writer’s health and other setbacks forced changes, and he and his wife mostly didn’t even attempt to follow the actual route, which frequently involved harsh terrain and dangerous conditions. The narrative bogs down in mundane details—unsuccessful attempts to see parks and other places that are closed, the particular ingredients of lunches eaten while camping—from which no significance is wrung and which don’t connect to Escalante’s travels. At the journey’s end, Roberts reflects that he has “gone someplace far and strange and wonderful” with his wife. It’s a touching tribute, but this slow-paced tale of a marital road trip is likely only to interest Roberts’s most ardent fans. (July)