The Price of Glory

Book excerpt: The Price of Glory is the story of a noble mission, conceived by the man who vowed to see it through to completion. His name was Robert La Salle. His goal was to establish a French colony at the mouth of the Mississippi river and then claim the entire river valley and all its tributaries for his king, Louis XIV. While it was La Salle who conceived the brilliant idea, it was he who was responsible for its failure. That and the primitive state of navigation in the 17th century. Taming a wilderness populated only by its original inhabitants was a grim task. The Price of Glory, based rigorously on historical facts but written as a novel, will place you at the center of all the action, terror, cruelty, betrayal and bravery induced by the attempt to tame that land which would become part of America. It will also reveal the volatile and unstable personality of Robert La Salle which insured its failure. In the end, the hundreds of lost lives under his care proved to be too high a price for his glory.