Well, I've finally come to the end of the saga of Captain Bligh and Mr. Christian. In the final chapters, the author tells us what happened to all the principals, how they fared in their lives and careers, and how they died.
It's a great story, but in the end somewhat sad. I kept hoping Bligh would regain some of his reputation and be sufficiently rewarded for his efforts, or that Peter Heywood (the man largely responsible for the alternate version of the mutiny) would finally be exposed as a fraud. None of that happened, of course, and we're left with the Hollywood version of the story (itself taken from a novel) and with most people these days being unaware of "the rest of the story," as Paul Harvey would say.
But fortunately, Caroline Alexander took an interest, and thanks to her we now have not only the story in all its complexity, but a different, more balanced way of looking at this seafaring tale. I recommend The Bounty highly.
And now, on to the next! This time I'm reading a short novel, Migrant Souls, by a Chicano writer, Arturo Islas. I started it today and already I'm involved in the characters' lives. It's about a Mexican-American family living near the border between Texas and Mexico, written from the point of view of two of the daughters.
(A side note: I first tried the novel A Feast of Snakes, by Harry Crews, thinking it might be light, but it was anything but that. The main character is completely unsympathetic--violent, criminal, cold-hearted. It's going into the give-away pile.)
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