Excerpt from Chenneville by Paulette Jiles, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

His alive and living mother sent loving regards. He dropped his head back and watched the unmoving blue skies of Virginia, and relief overtook him. It was a silky feeling of broad, inclusive happiness that brought images of the rolling great Missouri River and, for some reason, three big horses named The Corbeau and Sheba and Blackjack. He sat there in the sunlight until it faded.

John was to stay at the Robidoux House when he arrived in St. Louis. His uncle Basile Chenneville had more money than God, but he chose to stay in a place where he could speak French instead of at, say, the fashionable Planter House, where he would have to deal with English-speaking waiters, or worse, the Irish, and even worse than that, American food. Vegetables boiled for hours. Flour gravy on everything. In his dialectical French, salted with ancient words that few used anymore except people like the Robidoux family, Basile could order services, make demands, dine well, and bargain with far more facility.

So John hired Lemuel for thirty-five dollars a month. They were going to be among crowds, both aboard a steamboat and then in the city of St. Louis. He needed a person wise in the ways of that semi–criminal netherworld of riverfronts and city streets. John had never thought of southerners as city people, but the byways of Richmond were plagued with gangs, they said, desperate war orphans and a criminal element one would expect only in big northern cities. Lemuel had apparently graduated from that hard and starving school. However, John was not interested in hearing his story. He was trying to recover his own.

He still needed the cane, and still his right hand shook when he lifted the straight razor. He could not write well yet, but it would not be long, because he wouldn't quit until he could.

One last visit to the doctor; the man's stethoscope lay beside him unused, since by now he knew John's heart and lungs were in top condition, no problem there. Lemuel stood demurely behind John with John's coat over his arm.

"You'll sign my release, then," John said.

"Of course. Remarkable recovery." The doctor signed the form. "You are a determined man. Now, are you sure about this journey?"

"Yes, my uncle has carefully written out instructions for every step of the way. He's afraid I can't tell a steamboat from a shithouse, but I appreciate his concern."

Excerpted from Chenneville by Paulette Jiles. Copyright © 2023 by Paulette Jiles. Excerpted by permission of William Morrow. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.