Soldiers of Fortune

📖 The Scoop

Miss Alice Langham is a beautiful and accomplished heiress with all the suitors her circumstances would imply, the most eligible of whom is Reggie King, similarly wealthy and leisured, from the oldest and best of American families. However, for Alice, the man 'who could give her something else besides approval of her beauty and her mind, had not (yet) disclosed himself.' In walks Robert Clay, a self-assured mining engineer, soldier and ex-cowboy. An experienced man, Clay has held a boyish fascination for her since seeing her picture in a society publication, motivating his career as prospector and manager of her father's mining operation in the fictional republic of Olancho so that, like Gatsby, he can win his own Daisy. Clay's proto-typical Gatsby pre-occupations are so pronounced that it's impossible to believe that Fitzgerald was unaware of this book: "the great part of the inspiration I have had to do what little I have done came from you. You were a sort of promise of something better to me ... all that part of life that I have never known, the sweetness and the nobleness and grace of civilization." Gatsby himself could have said that! Alice and her younger, less beautiful yet refreshingly unconventional sister, Hope, come to stay in Olancho as an unstable political situation starts to explode. Alvarez is a corrupt governor sympathetic to the Valencia Mining Corps who wishes to be a Dictator, whilst Mendoza is a corrupt general who wishes to be President, antagonistic to Clay after a heated confrontation. Davis was a famous war correspondent and adventurer in his time, an honorary member of Teddy Rosevelt's 'rough riders' and it shows, as all the incidental details in this book smack convincingly of first-hand experience. It has the same kind of tone of self-interested machismo that Hemingway later made a name for himself with, and the same slightly underdone romanticism. The romance is indeed the weak link in what was otherwise a decent, well written read. For Clay, Alice 'appealed to every ambition and to every taste he cherished', yet his affections take a surprising turn. But little is gained by this aspect of the story as revolutionary events take centre stage, and it takes the appearance of an American filibuster named Burke to liven things up again

Genre: Fiction / Classics (fancy, right?)