{"id":1192,"date":"2018-12-31T16:09:16","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T16:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=1192"},"modified":"2018-12-31T16:09:16","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T16:09:16","slug":"kerr-lamars-folly_011418","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=1192","title":{"rendered":"Kerr, Lamar’s Folly_011418"},"content":{"rendered":"
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HISTORICAL FICTION\/TEXANA<\/p>\n

Jeffrey Stuart Kerr<\/span><\/p>\n

Lamar\u2019s Folly: A Novel<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Texas Tech University Press<\/p>\n

Paperback, 978-1682830185, 320 pages, $24.95<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Si Dunn<\/p>\n

Nearly 177 years after he ended his term<\/span> as second president of the Texas Republic, Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar remains a controversial figure in Lone Star history.<\/p>\n

He is remembered for some good things: heroics during the Battle of San Jacinto; picking the tiny riverfront village of Waterloo (now Austin) as the republic\u2019s new capitol; and convincing the state legislature to set aside generous swaths of land to support public education.<\/p>\n

But, along the way, Lamar also became bitter enemies with another Texas Revolution hero, Sam Houston, first president of the republic. Unlike Houston, Lamar opposed Texas becoming part of the United States. Instead, he wanted to see the republic thrive and expand westward to the Pacific, to help strengthen its independence.<\/p>\n

In Lamar\u2019s Folly, <\/span>Austin writer Jeffrey Stuart Kerr<\/span> makes effective and entertaining use of historical fiction as he tries to get to the heart of why Mirabeau B. Lamar, without Texas Senate approval, launched the disastrous Texan Santa Fe Expedition in 1841 to try to annex parts of northern New Mexico and divert trade from the Santa Fe Trail to flow through Austin. The republic\u2019s treasury was almost broke at the time, yet Lamar had some public support and backing by several newspapers. And, as Kerr\u2019s novel portrays him, Lamar also was headstrong, easily swayed by supportive opinions, and convinced God had brought him to Texas to accomplish expansion.<\/p>\n

Kerr employs two historical figures to tell the story of Lamar\u2019s presidency and his doomed-from-the-start expedition: Lamar\u2019s loyal private secretary, the Rev. Edward Fontaine, and Fontaine\u2019s slave, Jacob, a secret Sam Houston admirer. Each man later would become prominent in Austin\u2019s white and black religious communities.<\/p>\n

In Lamar\u2019s Folly, <\/span>however, the focus stays on Lamar\u2019s rise to the Texas presidency, his failures to win international backing for the struggling republic, his feuds with Houston (who soon would regain power as third president of Texas), the ragged launch of an expedition funded with promissory notes, and what happened once news of its disaster finally reached Austin.<\/p>\n

Officially billed as a trade mission, the expedition had a 320-man military escort, supposedly for protection against marauding Indians. But it ran low on supplies long before reaching New Mexico, which was still part of Mexico. Then, as the Texans struggled to find Santa Fe, they were taken prisoner by a large Mexican Army force and marched 2,000 miles to prison in Mexico City. Some died, but others survived and were released the following year, after U.S. diplomatic efforts.<\/p>\n

Jeffrey Stuart Kerr has called his book \u201ca cautionary tale of hubris and its consequences,\u201d and he concedes that he has taken certain \u201cliberties\u201d with some of the characters\u2019 motivations and thoughts. He has also stretched a few time periods, such as having Edward Fontaine serve longer as Lamar\u2019s private secretary than actually transpired, so early animosity between Lamar and Houston can be shown.<\/p>\n

Lamar\u2019s Folly<\/span> is excellent fiction, and it brings fresh attention to several significant moments and people in early Texas and Austin history.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HISTORICAL FICTION\/TEXANA Jeffrey Stuart Kerr Lamar\u2019s Folly: A Novel Texas Tech University Press Paperback, 978-1682830185, 320 pages, $24.95 Reviewed by Si Dunn Nearly 177 years after he ended his term as second president of the Texas Republic, Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar remains a controversial figure in Lone Star history. He is remembered for some good things: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}