INTO THE HEARTLAND

A historical romance focuses on the construction of the Erie Canal.

In this attractively designed reissue of Casey’s 1988 novel, A Land Beyond the River, the action opens in 1810, when the United States is already straining its boundaries and yearning to stretch out west. One avatar of that dream is New York City Mayor DeWitt Clinton, who wishes to orchestrate the building of a great waterway extending west of the Hudson River to Lake Erie. The author vividly conveys the somewhat grubby passion that motivates Clinton, a combination of vision and avarice that he’s well aware can only come to fruition with the cooperation of a grand alignment of social, political, and financial powers throughout the Hudson Valley and beyond. He has ideas along these lines, too, but he also faces a major obstacle, and it’s not the impenetrable wilderness between him and his destination. It’s the young and ferociously ambitious future president and Tammany Hall operator Martin Van Buren, who wants to scupper the project for his own reasons. In Clinton’s search for allies, he seeks to enlist two key figures: the wealthy, influential widow Eleanora Van Rensselaer and the wily, rough-hewn ship captain Daniel Hedges. As the story gains momentum, the growing challenges of planning and erecting the Erie Canal are joined with the looming threat of a renewed war with Britain. The tale follows its tight central cast of characters through the War of 1812, with the tensions of the narrative coming to a head.

The main frictions of Casey’s story derive not from the work of engineering or the cultural expansion of the plot but from the more personal facets. Eleanora has a scandal buried in her past linked to her deceased husband, and Clinton’s clashes with all the political characters in his path feature bristling personalities. Aaron Burr, for instance, is “far too slippery,” and Clinton angrily refers to Van Buren as “the bastard son of an innkeeper.” These personal elements electrify the narrative. They make the story so compulsively readable that they entirely vindicate the author’s decision to give the book an attractive cover and reissue it for a new readership. Casey has a remarkable ability to bring alive the daily life of the Hudson Valley at the beginning of the 19th century and to invest all these well-known historical figures, like Burr and Van Buren, with flawed, three-dimensional qualities. In fact, the novel’s only noticeable flaw is the imbalance between the two narrative emphases: Alongside the richly textured historical figures, Daniel and particularly Eleanora often seem thinly contrived and stereotypical. The author’s skill at dramatizing the Byzantine politics behind financing and constructing the Erie Canal is so pronounced that most readers may find themselves wishing he’d stuck to that and left the romantic plot on the drawing-room floor. And curiously, despite what seems like the narrative’s best efforts, the standout character is easily Van Buren—probably a first for American fiction.

A meaty, enjoyable drama about the personalities clashing over the building of the Erie Canal.