The Mapmaker’s Wife by Robert Whitaker is a bit of a miss-title .
It should have been called “The Mapmakers.”
Matt Dean, a college friend of mine and author of the Lambda award finalist, The River in Winter, is working on a new novel that I can’t wait to read. The Protagonist of Matt’s novel is writing a book about a scientific quest from the age of enlightenment. Of course, while writing about the painful struggles between politics, religion, and science in the 1700’s the protagonist is also being affected by our modern struggles involving those same social forces today. Like I said before, I can’t wait to read it!
Since learning about Matt’s project, I have been fascinated with Age of Enlightenment. Maybe that’s why I was so pleased to discover The Map Maker’s Wife was about the entire French Peruvian expedition and not just the climactic journey of Isabel Gramesón-Godin crossing the Amazon wilderness to reunite with her husband.
This history explores the influence of the 1730s scientific community on the politics of both Europe and the New World. Scientists argue their theories and divide into factions following different philosophies of thought. Young, intrepid scientists undertake bold adventures to gather evidence in hopes of being the one to discover the missing piece of data that will settle a great scientific question once and for all. The question at hand: What is the exact size and shape of the Earth?
The Mapmakers are the members of the La Condamine expedition to Peru. Their mission was to measure the arc of one degree of the earth’s meridian at the equator. With this information, and the measurements taken at other more hospitable locations around the globe, the great scientific minds of the century would be able to calculate, for the first time, the actual size of the world. This was a topic of huge political interest. With European powers scrambling over pieces of the New World, it would help to know how much world there was to go around.
The expedition itself is a marvel of survival. The French team braved the wilderness, poisonous insects, carnivorous animals, and deadly reptiles. There were hostile natives and even more hostile Spaniards. Frenchmen were often unwelcome in the Spanish cities of South America. The most amazing part is not that they explored this frightening new wilderness but that they so very carefully mapped it, retraced their steps to check their findings, took readings and gathered all incidental information for it’s own sake as well. They weren’t just crossing the Amazon basin. They were making a study of it.
Ahhhh! The days when it was cool to be a science nerd… Scientists had the ear of kings. Geographers were treated like nobility. Even a young signal carrier attached to the Peruvian expedition was regarded a great man because of his place in the company and won the hand of a gentle lady from a wealthy, prominent, Peruvian family. This was Isabel Gramasón. She was raised in luxury and educated in a convent. At 15, she married Jean Godin, signal carrier to La Condamine. She was wealthy, lovely, and longed to see Paris.
No spoilers, but your heart will break when the young lovers are separated by an entire continent. The land and it’s politics are both hostile to their reunion. The story of Isabel’s struggle to rejoin her husband amazed the entire known world of the day. It will amaze you too. I sometimes wonder at what enables one person to survive and what is lacking that causes another to succumb. While The Mapmaker’s Wife cannot answer that question, it explores is beautifully.
The Mapmaker’s wife is a fascinating read for anyone interested in the history of the Enlightenment and people who enjoy adventure stories and survival stories. Most of all, it’s for people who like triumph of the human spirit stories.
When you’re done with it. Tell me what you think. I’m afraid we’ll just have to keep waiting for Matt’s book. But The Mapmaker’s Wife will help pass the time.
Read ~ Write ~ Wander
~Angie
(Cover Art used under fair use from Amazon)
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