On the early American trail with Tony Horwitz

By Whit Griswold
Published: August 14, 2008

For most of us, there is a 128-year gap between the two most commonly remembered dates in early Euro-American history - 1492 and 1620. Who, why, and what happened in the six generations between Columbus's landfall in the Bahamas and the Pilgrims arrival at Plymouth?

In "A Voyage Long and Strange" (Henry Holt, 2008), Tony Horwitz answers many of these questions, and raises a few more. In the process, he tells a terrific story, moving smoothly between past and present, history and anecdote.

A resident of Vineyard Haven, Mr. Horwitz is the author of five books. Earlier in his career, he worked for the Wall Street Journal for 15 years, reporting from Baghdad and Bosnia, among other hotspots. In 1995, he won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. Nowadays he is a full-time book writer.

"As long as I can get away with it, I'll ride this pony as long as I can," he said in a conversation Saturday morning on the porch of his home on Main Street that he shares with his wife, the Pulitzer-winning novelist Geraldine Brooks, and two sons, Nathaniel, 12, and Bizu, 5. "To be paid to indulge your own interests and write about them is a pretty good job."

Horwitz has long been interested in first contact between Europeans and natives. "It's an experience we can't have, no matter how far we travel, and to me it's the ultimate adventure," he said.

A natural adventurer who describes himself as a bit manic, Horwitz has satisfied his wanderlust and curiosity by hitchhiking across the U.S., Europe, and Australia, often writing about the eclectic collection of characters and obscure historical sites he encounters. No surprise, then, that his feet began to twitch and his mind, too, when he happened by Plymouth Rock a few years ago.

Early in "Voyage," he asks: "What would it be like to take a pre-Pilgrimage through early America that ended at Plymouth Rock instead of beginning there? To make landfall where the first Europeans had, meet the Naturals, mine the past, and map its memory in the present?"

Tony Horwitz and his son Bizu, 5, on the front porch of their home in Vineyard Haven.
Photo by Lynn Christoffers

So off he heads on a parallel exploration of his own -to libraries and to places made famous by the early explorers of America. The first stop is Newfoundland, where the Vikings set up shop for 40 years 500 years before Columbus went ashore in the Bahamas. Archeologists have unearthed various everyday tools, and foundations, but the Vikings' most prophetic legacy was their response to their first contact with native Americans - to slaughter them, for reasons that scholars have debated ever since. Leave it to Horwitz to find someone far from the ivory tower to come up with a compelling conjecture - Loretta Decker, a 33-year-old Newfoundlander who works at the site of the Vikings' settlement. "Maybe it was a test, like dunking a witch," she said. "To see if they were really human. People are always scared of what they don't know."

In the Dominican Republic, Horwitz connects with a renaissance rambler named Caonabo, after a Taino chief who had the temerity to object, by way of massacre, to the mistreatment of natives by the Spanish settlers at La Navidad, Columbus's first settlement on Hispaniola. As they make their tortuous way across the island to visit sites made famous - or infamous, depending - by Columbus, Horwitz attunes the reader to the modern Dominican Republic with a keen eye, ear, and wit.

Geraldine Brooks and Tony Horwitz.
Photo by Alan Brigish

For a deeper appreciation of Coronado's quest in the southwest, Horwitz turns to a local newspaper editor, the Zuni tribe's archeological office, and Richard and Shirley Flint, amateur turned professional historians who have dedicated their lives to the study of the conquistador who tromped thousands of miles from Mexico into the heart of Kansas in search of Quivira, the land of gold.

On the trail of DeSoto's desperate wanderings through the southeast, Horwitz subjected himself to a role in a reenactment where he could barely hold up the armor he wore - for authenticity. For authority, he interviewed Charles Hudson, an anthropologist at the University of Georgia who dedicated 20 years to mapping DeSoto's route.

With equal measures of scholarship and skepticism, Horwitz also details the first English settlements, in North Carolina and Virginia. John Smith, for one, comes off as something less than the romantic figure merchandisers and myth-makers like to portray.

Hebrew Center hosts husband and wife Pulitzer winners

Tony Horwitz and Geraldine Brooks will be at the Hebrew Center in Vineyard Haven this Sunday, August 17, at 7:30 pm, for a talk and book signing. Charlayne Hunter-Gault, the acclaimed writer and NPR correspondent, will join them in conversation. A fundraiser for the center, the event costs $25.

Ms. Brooks and Mr. Horwitz met at the Columbia School of Journalism and later worked together for the Wall Street Journal for several years. After two non-fiction books, Ms. Brooks has turned her attention to novels. She won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2006 for "March," and her most recent novel, "People of the Book," was published early this year (see Times review, Jan 10, 2008).

When asked about two full-time book writers living and working under one roof, Mr. Horwitz said, "For us it works well. You know, Geraldine writes fiction now, so she's on the second floor making stuff up and I'm up in the attic writing non-fiction. I don't think I'm much use to her as an editor anymore because I don't know how to write fiction. I still read and edit her work, but I think I'm of limited utility."

But Mr. Horwitz still values Ms. Brooks's critical reading of his work, saying, "I think it's great to have my best editor in the world in-house."

Vineyard readers will perk up at the description of Bartholmew Gosnold's cruise through local waters in 1602, On a mission to harvest sassafras as a cure for syphilis, Gosnold encamped at Cuttyhunk for a few weeks, where natives helped him hew and haul the wood in return for trinkets. This was one of the very few encounters with native Americans that did not end in violence against them.

Violence is a constant in the story of early American settlement, but somehow Horwitz maintains an upbeat, engaging voice with the telling of what is, at bottom, a really sad story. "I really struggled with that," Horwitz said. "When I set out, I didn't realize how relentlessly tragic this story is. In the old days they treated these explorers as heroes, bearers of Christianity and civilization, and then we swung to the opposite extreme, where we tend to see them as nothing but monsters, who didn't discover America, they destroyed it. I'm trying to find a balance between those two extremes."

Horwitz's writing is all about balance. It's neither straight history, nor travel writing, nor journalism, but a combination of the three. He suggested "participatory history" as a name for the genre, but he didn't sound convinced. "It sort of weaves between past and present, and it's really half history and half journalism/travel," he said. "It's just something I stumbled into with my books, as someone trained as a journalist who really loves history."

Hardly accidental, Horwitz's style is engaging and convincing. More personal than pedantic, it reflects an incurable curiosity and a love of people of all sorts, and warts. His tenacity keeps him moving, if not always directly forward. Sometimes he picks up a fruitful clue, sometimes he runs into a dead end. When he suggested to a stranger in a bar in Plymouth that there were settlements on this continent before 1620, he was told, "Forget all the others. This is the friggin' beginning of America."

As for his next book, Horwitz said, "It'll be something related to American history, but I haven't settled on anything. The trick with American history is to find things that haven't been done to death, or that are so obscure that no one wants to read them." Whatever the topic, Horwitz shouldn't worry about finding an audience, given the winning mixture he's concocted of authoritative history, thorough reporting, and great storytelling.

Tony Horwitz and Geraldine Brooks, in Conversation with Charlayne Hunter-Gault, 7:30 pm, Sunday, August 17. $25. Hebrew Center, Centre Street, Vineyard Haven.