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Lamar’s Folly: A Novel
Mirabeau Lamar seeks nothing less than a Texas empire that will dominate the North American continent. Brave exploits at the Battle of San Jacinto bring him rank, power, and prestige, which by 1838 propel him to the presidency of the young Republic of Texas and put him in position to achieve his dream. Edward Fontaine, who works for and idolizes Lamar, vows to help his hero overcome all obstacles, including the substantial power of Sam Houston. Houston and Lamar are not only political, but personal enemies, and each man regards the other with contempt. Edward's slave Jacob likes and admires his master, but cannot share his hatred of Sam Houston. The loyalties of both Jacob and Edward are tested by President Lamar's belief that a righteous cause justifies any means necessary to sustain it. Lamar becomes infatuated with a married woman who resembles his deceased wife. He sends the woman's husband on the ill-fated Santa Fe Expedition, the failure of which humiliates Lamar and provokes a crisis in his relationship with Edward, who in turn jeopardizes the trust that Jacob has placed in him. Edward laments the waste of Lamar's genius, while Jacob marvels at the hypocrisy of both men.
Jeffrey Stuart Kerr is the author of several titles, including Seat of Empire: The Embattled Birth of Austin, Texas, winner of the Summerfield G. Roberts Award and a True West Best Western Book.
Jeffrey Stuart Kerr is the author of several titles, including Seat of Empire: The Embattled Birth of Austin, Texas, winner of the Summerfield G. Roberts Award and a True West Best Western Book.
- GenresFiction
320 pages, Paperback
Published November 15, 2017
1 person is currently reading
21 people want to read
About the author
Jeffrey Stuart Kerr
6 books31 followersThis author is also published under Jeff Kerr.
Jeff Kerr is an award-winning author who has published works in several genres, including nonfiction, historical fiction, and political satire. He is currently working on an action thriller, Refuge, which he plans on finishing by the end of this year.
An avid reader with an affinity for historical fiction, crime fiction, and action thrillers, Jeff will focus on the latter two genres for the foreseeable future.
Jeff lives in Austin with his wife and dog. When not writing, he can be found floating a river or battling cedar on his small chunk of land in the Texas Hill Country.
Jeff Kerr is an award-winning author who has published works in several genres, including nonfiction, historical fiction, and political satire. He is currently working on an action thriller, Refuge, which he plans on finishing by the end of this year.
An avid reader with an affinity for historical fiction, crime fiction, and action thrillers, Jeff will focus on the latter two genres for the foreseeable future.
Jeff lives in Austin with his wife and dog. When not writing, he can be found floating a river or battling cedar on his small chunk of land in the Texas Hill Country.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 23, 2019
I'd previously read Seat of Empire, one of Kerr's several non-fiction works, which recounted the acrimonious debate between Sam Houston and Mirabeau Lamar over where the capital of the new nation of Texas was to be located. Happily for me, an Austinite, it ended up being here, but beyond the incredible wealth of historical detail Kerr revealed in that book lay a fascinating human story of a clash of personalities and ambitions - the grandiose visions of Lamar the poet for Texas to be its own sovereign empire stretching out to the Pacific, and the more hardheaded plans of Houston the politician for Texas to take its place alongside the other states as just another part of America. This novel is a (heavily) fictionalized exploration of that deep-seated personal enmity between the two men and conflict between different destinies for Texas. While I disagreed with several of Kerr's artistic decisions, I also read the whole thing straight through in a day; he is a skillful storyteller as well as an excellent historian.
Most of the novel is told in narrative form from the perspective of Edward Fontaine, a real person who was Lamar's personal secretary, and who also eventually built and became the pastor at the church that became St. David's Episcopal Church (which is where I had my christening!). There are also brief passages in each chapter from the perspective of his slave Jacob, another real person who founded several Baptist churches in Central Texas. In each chapter Edward recounts his relationship with Lamar, from their meeting during the battle of San Jacinto to their eventual parting after the end of Lamar's tenure as President of Texas, as Lamar does everything in his power, and a bit beyond, to forge Texas into an imperial nation while simultaneously feuding with Houston on both a political level and a personal one, as the less-charismatic Lamar is often upstaged by the more flamboyant Houston, with Jacob adding additional context and a non-Anglo perspective that's often an ironic counterpoint to Edward's version of events. Eventually Lamar's career is wrecked by the confluence of two scandals - his not-quite-legal dispatch of an ill-fated expedition to conquer Santa Fe and thus enrich and enlarge Texas, and the Kerr-invented affair he carries on with the wife of a blacksmith he sent along with it. The novel ends with both Edward and Jacob reflecting on Lamar's hubris, the confluence of personal tragedy and underlying character flaws that might have contributed to it, and nods toward their respective post-Lamar lives in a Texas where Houston's vision predominates (with the obvious exception of the location of the capital!), even though many Texans have unconsciously adopted Lamar's attitude of a Texas apart from the rest of the country.
I had very mixed feelings about the David-and-Bathsheba affair (surprisingly, no one in the novel mentions the obvious Biblical parallel) between Lamar and Mrs. Tucker that Kerr concocted for the novel, which plays a big role in Edward's gradual disillusionment with Lamar. It adds a very human element to Lamar's outsized personality, and is actually believable given Lamar's real-life tragic loss of his wife and brother, and it also gives its title a nice double meaning when combined with the ultimate disaster of the Santa Fe Expedition (interestingly, I learned in a KUT interview with Kerr that "Lamar's folly" was a real-life contemporaneous reference to a comically inadequate defensive palisade that Lamar had built around the Capitol; for some reason this is not referenced within the novel itself). However, I wasn't ever able to fully relax and just roll with it. Obviously just about anything is fair game when it comes to historical fiction, and Kerr does quite well with his other flourishes, but given that Lamar is the central axis around which the entire novel revolves, and the quality of his character most of all, I wasn't quite sure what I was supposed to take away from his affair, especially because Kerr doesn't really need it for any ruminations on "the perils of hubris" or "power inevitably corrupts" or "sin destroys even the mighty" or what have you. Imagine a historical fiction along the lines of the Broadway play Hamilton, except that Jefferson is also given an extra mistress for some reason and ends up fighting a duel of his own, or Steven Spielberg's movie Lincoln but Lincoln is given a fictitious brother fighting for the South. It just violated my suspension of disbelief, whereas Kerr's other liberties, such as not mentioning Edward's wife or side career as a politician himself, didn't for whatever reason. It's interesting that he didn't substantially alter Sam Houston, a much more sympathetic person, to the same degree.
But if that doesn't bother you, then otherwise this is quite good. Kerr very convincingly represents the way that secondhand reports and personal loyalties can forever taint your perceptions of someone, as Edward despises Houston solely due to loyalty to Lamar and the rumors of Houston's drinking and infidelities despite Houston's unfailing courtesy towards him. Jacob throughout provides a more level-headed perspective on the two men, continually preferring Houston due to his kindness towards slaves and Indians versus Lamar's more typical Southern white supremacist views (though there is one curious scene in the book where, just prior to a scouting expedition reaching the settlement of Waterloo, Jacob states that Lamar scalps an Indian he and Edward have both shot and offers the scalp to Edward, which is supposed to illustrate his dislike of Indians, though Edward does not mention the scalping at all; otherwise their two narrations agree entirely on actual events). Lamar's own personal transition from an opponent of the genocide of the Indians to a strong proponent is also given a firm grounding in his own character, and how his desire for Texas as he saw it to become a great nation led him to pursue whatever means necessary to make that happen, including dispatching the Santa Fe expedition despite Houston convincing the Texas Congress not to authorize it. And of course the initial battle over the location of the capital plays a large role in the book, although not the infamous Angelina Eberly cannon incident later on (in that same KUT interview with Kerr he reveals that Lamar was the only President of Texas inaugurated in Houston, and that Houston was the only President inaugurated in Austin; this historical irony also for some reason wasn't mentioned here and was not really emphasized in Seat of Empire either).
As a lover of Austin history in general and of Kerr's previous book in particular I was predisposed to like it, but anyone who enjoys Texas-themed historical fiction will enjoy it as well.
Most of the novel is told in narrative form from the perspective of Edward Fontaine, a real person who was Lamar's personal secretary, and who also eventually built and became the pastor at the church that became St. David's Episcopal Church (which is where I had my christening!). There are also brief passages in each chapter from the perspective of his slave Jacob, another real person who founded several Baptist churches in Central Texas. In each chapter Edward recounts his relationship with Lamar, from their meeting during the battle of San Jacinto to their eventual parting after the end of Lamar's tenure as President of Texas, as Lamar does everything in his power, and a bit beyond, to forge Texas into an imperial nation while simultaneously feuding with Houston on both a political level and a personal one, as the less-charismatic Lamar is often upstaged by the more flamboyant Houston, with Jacob adding additional context and a non-Anglo perspective that's often an ironic counterpoint to Edward's version of events. Eventually Lamar's career is wrecked by the confluence of two scandals - his not-quite-legal dispatch of an ill-fated expedition to conquer Santa Fe and thus enrich and enlarge Texas, and the Kerr-invented affair he carries on with the wife of a blacksmith he sent along with it. The novel ends with both Edward and Jacob reflecting on Lamar's hubris, the confluence of personal tragedy and underlying character flaws that might have contributed to it, and nods toward their respective post-Lamar lives in a Texas where Houston's vision predominates (with the obvious exception of the location of the capital!), even though many Texans have unconsciously adopted Lamar's attitude of a Texas apart from the rest of the country.
I had very mixed feelings about the David-and-Bathsheba affair (surprisingly, no one in the novel mentions the obvious Biblical parallel) between Lamar and Mrs. Tucker that Kerr concocted for the novel, which plays a big role in Edward's gradual disillusionment with Lamar. It adds a very human element to Lamar's outsized personality, and is actually believable given Lamar's real-life tragic loss of his wife and brother, and it also gives its title a nice double meaning when combined with the ultimate disaster of the Santa Fe Expedition (interestingly, I learned in a KUT interview with Kerr that "Lamar's folly" was a real-life contemporaneous reference to a comically inadequate defensive palisade that Lamar had built around the Capitol; for some reason this is not referenced within the novel itself). However, I wasn't ever able to fully relax and just roll with it. Obviously just about anything is fair game when it comes to historical fiction, and Kerr does quite well with his other flourishes, but given that Lamar is the central axis around which the entire novel revolves, and the quality of his character most of all, I wasn't quite sure what I was supposed to take away from his affair, especially because Kerr doesn't really need it for any ruminations on "the perils of hubris" or "power inevitably corrupts" or "sin destroys even the mighty" or what have you. Imagine a historical fiction along the lines of the Broadway play Hamilton, except that Jefferson is also given an extra mistress for some reason and ends up fighting a duel of his own, or Steven Spielberg's movie Lincoln but Lincoln is given a fictitious brother fighting for the South. It just violated my suspension of disbelief, whereas Kerr's other liberties, such as not mentioning Edward's wife or side career as a politician himself, didn't for whatever reason. It's interesting that he didn't substantially alter Sam Houston, a much more sympathetic person, to the same degree.
But if that doesn't bother you, then otherwise this is quite good. Kerr very convincingly represents the way that secondhand reports and personal loyalties can forever taint your perceptions of someone, as Edward despises Houston solely due to loyalty to Lamar and the rumors of Houston's drinking and infidelities despite Houston's unfailing courtesy towards him. Jacob throughout provides a more level-headed perspective on the two men, continually preferring Houston due to his kindness towards slaves and Indians versus Lamar's more typical Southern white supremacist views (though there is one curious scene in the book where, just prior to a scouting expedition reaching the settlement of Waterloo, Jacob states that Lamar scalps an Indian he and Edward have both shot and offers the scalp to Edward, which is supposed to illustrate his dislike of Indians, though Edward does not mention the scalping at all; otherwise their two narrations agree entirely on actual events). Lamar's own personal transition from an opponent of the genocide of the Indians to a strong proponent is also given a firm grounding in his own character, and how his desire for Texas as he saw it to become a great nation led him to pursue whatever means necessary to make that happen, including dispatching the Santa Fe expedition despite Houston convincing the Texas Congress not to authorize it. And of course the initial battle over the location of the capital plays a large role in the book, although not the infamous Angelina Eberly cannon incident later on (in that same KUT interview with Kerr he reveals that Lamar was the only President of Texas inaugurated in Houston, and that Houston was the only President inaugurated in Austin; this historical irony also for some reason wasn't mentioned here and was not really emphasized in Seat of Empire either).
As a lover of Austin history in general and of Kerr's previous book in particular I was predisposed to like it, but anyone who enjoys Texas-themed historical fiction will enjoy it as well.
November 22, 2017
Lamar’s Folly is the compelling fictional story of real characters and events in Texas history that elicits the desire for further investigation and research. The overall story begins around the time of the Battle of the Alamo and then the Battle of San Jacinto, when Texas eventually became a Republic, and Mirabeau Lamar was destined to become Vice President and then President of said Republic of Texas.
Jeffrey Stuart Kerr brings the truth of this time in Texas History to life by providing voices to historical names, along with a bit of fictional embellishment. What is most compelling, at least for me, is the stark contrast Kerr presents in this fiction between the perceptions of Edward Fontaine (secretary to Lamar) and his slave Jacob. Both men meet the same people (mostly) and see the same events unfold but through different lenses and with varied experiences. The most prominent example is with Sam Houston. Both men see this man differently. Fontaine because of his view of Houston’s drunkenness and animosity toward Lamar, and Jacob because Houston treated him with a modicum of kindness. As we see in Lamar’s Folly, sometimes the most uncluttered view of people is the truest.
Caution: The racial epithets and slurs against African Americans (mostly Jacob), Mexicans, and Native Americans are realistic for the time period yet uncomfortable to read in today’s environment. Written any other way, however, would render the story unconvincing, unfortunately. With that said, presenting the reader with both Jacob’s and Edward Fontaine’s viewpoints provides a more rounded and believable telling of this fictional story based on very real people.
I grew up with the Ballad of the Alamo playing in the background (I still tear up when I hear it). I am a true Texan and embrace my Texas heritage wholeheartedly. However, reading Lamar’s Folly reminds me that I don’t know or don’t remember all of my Texas History (my Texas History classes were a long time ago). A big Thank You goes out to Jeffrey Stuart Kerr for presenting the reading audience with such an engaging story about Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar and his incredible folly. What is this folly, you ask? Read this book and find out for yourself. You won’t be disappointed.
Jeffrey Stuart Kerr brings the truth of this time in Texas History to life by providing voices to historical names, along with a bit of fictional embellishment. What is most compelling, at least for me, is the stark contrast Kerr presents in this fiction between the perceptions of Edward Fontaine (secretary to Lamar) and his slave Jacob. Both men meet the same people (mostly) and see the same events unfold but through different lenses and with varied experiences. The most prominent example is with Sam Houston. Both men see this man differently. Fontaine because of his view of Houston’s drunkenness and animosity toward Lamar, and Jacob because Houston treated him with a modicum of kindness. As we see in Lamar’s Folly, sometimes the most uncluttered view of people is the truest.
Caution: The racial epithets and slurs against African Americans (mostly Jacob), Mexicans, and Native Americans are realistic for the time period yet uncomfortable to read in today’s environment. Written any other way, however, would render the story unconvincing, unfortunately. With that said, presenting the reader with both Jacob’s and Edward Fontaine’s viewpoints provides a more rounded and believable telling of this fictional story based on very real people.
I grew up with the Ballad of the Alamo playing in the background (I still tear up when I hear it). I am a true Texan and embrace my Texas heritage wholeheartedly. However, reading Lamar’s Folly reminds me that I don’t know or don’t remember all of my Texas History (my Texas History classes were a long time ago). A big Thank You goes out to Jeffrey Stuart Kerr for presenting the reading audience with such an engaging story about Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar and his incredible folly. What is this folly, you ask? Read this book and find out for yourself. You won’t be disappointed.
December 19, 2017
Lamar's Folly is a deceptively well-told tale centering on the men who shaped a nation upon the birth of Texas. Not only that, its an extremely important story that deserves to see the light of day and be read by many. I'm so glad I read it and am hopeful that this tour will cast light on its existence.
Before I go further, I must tell you, I'm a Texas history nut, and a Sam Houston fan through and through. So I was very curious to read this book. Also, I live in Lamar County. We are one of the few counties that voted WITH Sam Houston to stay with the Union during the secession crises (after which Houston resigned from being Governor rather than accepting the State Vote to secede). I've always thought that the Lamar County vote had to at least be a silver lining for old Sam, given his mutual animosity with Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar.
So, I'm not only a Houston aficionado, I have very entrenched conceptions of Lamar, the man. I was extremely curious to read a book about him, especially one entitled Lamar's Folly. It seemed safe enough to at least consider my feelings.
But when I opened the book, and saw how enamored Edward Fontaine originally was with Lamar, I thought I was in trouble. Then came good old Jake, not only shining some smart light on the truth of the matter, but also giving great voice to the enslaved men and women of our nation and state.
It turns out that this method of a dual narration was the perfect way to shed full light on many situations, while remaining true to the thoughts and actions of many men and women of that day. Kudo's to Jeffrey Stuart Kerr for writing this excellent novel, and to Texas Tech University press, for publishing it. I hope you'll take time to read it, especially if you live in the state. We have allowed our state stories to be overshadowed by our national ones. It is efforts like these that deserve our attention; it is histories like these that we must remember. There is no giveaway for this, so I hope you'll add the book to your lists or, better yet, go ahead and order it from Texas Tech Press.
Thank you Mr. Kerr for a review link so that I could read the book and give my honest opinion. Really wish you would get this on audio, too!
Great novel on Texas! No giveaway, but for the time being you can find my review here: https://sydsavvy.blogspot.com/2017/11...
Before I go further, I must tell you, I'm a Texas history nut, and a Sam Houston fan through and through. So I was very curious to read this book. Also, I live in Lamar County. We are one of the few counties that voted WITH Sam Houston to stay with the Union during the secession crises (after which Houston resigned from being Governor rather than accepting the State Vote to secede). I've always thought that the Lamar County vote had to at least be a silver lining for old Sam, given his mutual animosity with Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar.
So, I'm not only a Houston aficionado, I have very entrenched conceptions of Lamar, the man. I was extremely curious to read a book about him, especially one entitled Lamar's Folly. It seemed safe enough to at least consider my feelings.
But when I opened the book, and saw how enamored Edward Fontaine originally was with Lamar, I thought I was in trouble. Then came good old Jake, not only shining some smart light on the truth of the matter, but also giving great voice to the enslaved men and women of our nation and state.
It turns out that this method of a dual narration was the perfect way to shed full light on many situations, while remaining true to the thoughts and actions of many men and women of that day. Kudo's to Jeffrey Stuart Kerr for writing this excellent novel, and to Texas Tech University press, for publishing it. I hope you'll take time to read it, especially if you live in the state. We have allowed our state stories to be overshadowed by our national ones. It is efforts like these that deserve our attention; it is histories like these that we must remember. There is no giveaway for this, so I hope you'll add the book to your lists or, better yet, go ahead and order it from Texas Tech Press.
Thank you Mr. Kerr for a review link so that I could read the book and give my honest opinion. Really wish you would get this on audio, too!
Great novel on Texas! No giveaway, but for the time being you can find my review here: https://sydsavvy.blogspot.com/2017/11...
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews