Summary
Harrigan opens and closes his novel in San Antonio in 1911 observing Mott at a celebration marking 75 years of Texas independence. But his story actually begins in the spring of 1835 as American naturalist Edmund McGowan travels by horseback with his dog Professor along the San Antonio River toward the Texas coast. He is on his way to the City of Mexico to renew his government commission to provide a botanical survey of the subprovince of Texas. An unlikely hero, he tries to avoid the political whirlwinds swirling through Texas and lead a solitary life on the trail of knowledge of the plant life of Texas.
McGowan stops at a boarding house in Refugio where he meets Harrigan's other two primary characters -- Mary Mott, a widow who has now been operating the inn for two years after the death of her husband, and her 16-year-old son Terrell, whom she is trying to raise despite the threat of attack by Karankawa Indians.
McGowan arrives in the City of Mexico, where he meets Stephen F. Austin, leading empresario of Texas who had recently been released from prison, but still confined to the city and eager for news from Texas, and Santa Anna, the Mexican president who considers McGowan's request to continue his commission. The pace and intensity accelerate as Harrigan matches his Anglo characters with several Mexican figures, including Lt. Tenesforo Villasenor and Sgt. Blas Angel Montoya. The stories of military preparation lead back and forth across the border. All characters are eventually drawn together at the famous mission in Bexar where Santa Anna is determined to keep Texas under Mexican rule.
Along the way we also meet James Bowie, William Travis, Sam Houston and David Crockett. And despite the fact that we already know the bloody conclusion of this story, we become deeply interested in the lives of the fictional characters and want to know what will happen to them because their stories are strongly human. As if from a camera moving from spot to spot in the falling fortress, the siege of the Alamo is described by Harrigan in realistic language. The noise, the stench, the wounds, the fear and the bravery are all there, fully explaining this episode in history and making this a best-selling novel.
