Book: ‘Magnificent Destiny’ by Paul Wellman – May 21st, 2017
by Rob Smith, Jr. on May.21, 2017, under Books
Magnificent Destiny: A Novel About the Great Secret Adventure of Andrew Jackson and Sam Houston by Paul I. Wellman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a long and thorough sprawling book of Andrew Jackson and Sam Houston’s amazing relationship. Wellman does an outstanding job of creating such an epic accurately portraying so much about and beyond Jackson and Houston.
The writing is excellent throughout. The development of the characters is some of the best writing i’ve read. A reader can feel the power of the younger Jackson, the fight of illness in Jackson’s middle age and Jackson’s weakened form approaching death.
The plotting obviously was given wide territory as this book stretches 600 pages. For a contemporary novel, 600 pages usually means a need to edit out 400. In Wellman’s case, there is want of more.
The largest drawback of Wellman’s book is the sainthood given to Jackson and Houston. The two made mistakes and some were huge. Wellman slides past and reconstructs from a view of forgiveness. The continued debate as to just what Houston was doing riding away from Santa Ana is portrayed here with a kinda sorta logic of action meant to defeat the Mexican monster.
Bottom line: I recommend this book, if you can find it. 9 out of 10 points.
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