Saint Lawrence–Great Lakes system provides another route from the Atlantic, with short portages making it possible to paddle across Minnesota in the manner described in this story. Possibility does not make probability, of course, but the exploration theories of Magnus Bloodhammer are not as completely fantastic as they first might seem. There are widespread legends among Native American people from Peru to Canada of white-skinned visitors in the distant past and global legends of a lost golden age in which mythic figures bequeathed knowledge to humankind. Does myth have a kernel of historical truth?
I owe the idea that the Minnesota Norse could have been Templars escaping from Scandinavia – and a possible translation of curiously marked letters that make a cipher within the stone – to Kensington rune stone investigators Scott Wolter, a geologist, his wife Jan Wolter, and engineer Richard Nielsen.
The intriguing correlations between Freemasonry, the origins of the United States, and the design of Washington D.C., have been explored in a number of books and documentary films. Jefferson’s curiosity about woolly elephants, Missouri volcanoes, and mountains of salt is taken from history.
The White House did not earn that name until the British burnt it during the War of 1812 and its repaired shell was repainted.
Norway would not regain its independence until 1814, during the tumult of the Napoleonic wars.
The references to Norse myth are taken from the actual legends. But what of the botanical freak found by Magnus and Ethan? There have been a number of experiments in ‘electroculture,’ or the study of the effect of electrical fields on plants, including Bertholon’s electrovegetoma machine of 1783. Later experiments allegedly show roots growing in water turn towards electric current, or seeds germinating more quickly in an electric field. My ‘electric’ Yggdrasil is obviously fiction, but since the height of trees is limited by the difficulty of lifting water and nutrients up the trunk against the pull of gravity, I had fun imagining a ‘lightning-powered’ tree that has excess energy to overcome the obstacle.
Finally, while many Indians in this story are menacing in accord with the history of the time, I should note that contemporary accounts of Native Americans indicate they were every bit as varied, complex, and capable of good and evil as the Europeans writing about them. White captives portray a native world of astonishing freedom, humour, vigour, and gentleness, combined with a constant threat of famine, exposure, war, and torture. We have only fragmentary ideas of the ‘natural’ state of Native American societies because they were so rapidly affected – and infected – by the European invasion. The seeming emptiness of the west was the result of epidemics of germs that destroyed Indian populations before most explorers even got there. Firearms revolutionised tribal warfare, and all the tribes were in motion as they fled west from the European assault. The Dakota (or Sioux) became high plains horsemen only after being pushed out of the eastern woodlands by other tribes such as the Ojibway (or Chippewa), who got guns first. The horse came from the Spanish. Ethan Gage travels west of the Mississippi three years before Lewis and Clark, but even his unexplored west is profoundly changed from whatever it was before Columbus. If there ever was an Eden in America, its door had been closing for three centuries before Ethan Gage got there.
Or maybe, as Pierre and Namida suggest, Eden is where we make it.
About the Author
WILLIAM DIETRICH is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, historian and naturalist. His non-fiction has been widely used in university classes, and his fiction published in twenty-eight languages. He lives in Washington, and when not writing, reporting, or teaching environmental journalism, he reads, hikes, sails, remodels, and waves around the Roman cavalry sword his wife gave him to inspire his novels.
Napoleon’s Pyramids
The Rosetta Key
The Dakota Cipher
Copyright © 2009 by WILLIAM DIETRICH
Map by Nick Springer, Springer Cartographics LLC.
Read Ethan Gage’s previous adventures in … NAPOLEON’S PYRAMIDS
‘If you think finding a smart, intelligent, well-written action thriller is as tough as deciphering hieroglyphics … the book you’re looking for is
‘Unbeatable adventure rivalling the exploits of George MacDonald Fraser’s Harry Flashman’
Revolutionary Paris, 1798. Adventurer Ethan Gage – gambler, sharpshooter and pupil of the late Benjamin Franklin – wins a mysterious medallion in a card game. Within hours he is framed for murder and, facing the grim prospect of either prison or death, he barely escapes France with his life, choosing to accompany the ambitious young general Napoleon Bonaparte on his glorious mission to conquer Egypt. But even as he hurtles into war, Gage is pursued by shadowy enemies who seem determined to lay their hands on the baffling medallion, and the powers it could unlock, at all costs. In a race against time and terrain, he must find the answer to one of history’s greatest riddles, before it is too late…
THE ROSETTA KEY
‘Historical fiction meets thriller … The action is nearly nonstop, the humour is plentiful, and the intrigue is more than enough to keep the pages turning’
‘Marvellous and filled with colour …
Gage finds himself hurled into the Holy Land in dogged pursuit of an ancient Egyptian scroll imbued with magic, even as Bonaparte launches his 1799 invasion of Israel, which will climax at the epic siege of Acre. Pursuing Napoleon to France, where the General hopes ancient secrets will catapult him to power, the wily and inventive Gage faces old enemies with unlikely new friends, and must use wit, humour, derring-do, and an archaeological key to prevent dark powers from seizing control of the world.
