This is a fabulous, unputdownable book about the experience of a slave who gets sent along on the Spanish colonization of Florida.
It doesn't make you feel good about humanity, but it will teach you about the tough travels, the kindness and savagery of all involved.
I'm so very glad I read it. ( )

Just never grabbed me. ( )

This historical novel tells the story of the failed Navarez expedition from the mid-16th century. There were only four survivors who survived by walking all the way from Florida to Mexico. The novels provides an account of the survivor's journey told by Estevanico, an enslaved North-African Moor. The novel is fascinating and is very critical of the early Spanish explorers. ( )

I overall enjoyed this very much, the writing was excellent and it was about a part of history I don 't know much about. The Narvaez expedition set out to find gold in La Florida(which apparently encompasses much of the modern Southern US). The story is told from the point of view of a Moor slave, interspersed with his own life story and how he came to be a slave in Spain. The story is very skillfully told and the weaving back and forth makes sense but it did start to get bogged down a bit as the expedition falls apart and I could not really keep track of all of the members of the group. I though the telling of the Old and New World encounter was well handled and the certainly the greed for gold drove so many horrible actions. I began to loose the thread more when the survivors begin to travel among various tribes and the stay in Mexico though overall it seemed to end on an enigmatic but hopeful note.

“It was slowly dawning upon all of us that Apalache had no gold and there would be no glory. My fantasies of victory for my master and freedom for me had turned so completely awry that, for a moment, all my senses felt numb. I was rooted in my spot, unable to move, and my eyesight blurred. I thought about that night, long ago in Azemmur, when I had agreed to sell my life for a bit of gold. My father and my mother had both warned me about the danger of putting a price on everything, but I had not listened. Now, years later, I had convinced myself that, because I had been the first to find gold in La Florida, my life would be returned to me. But life should not be traded for gold—a simple lesson, which I had had to learn twice.”

This book is a fictionalized story based on a real expedition that took place in 1527 - 1536. Lalami creates a story around Mustafa, “The Moor,” a survivor of the Narváez expedition. His goal is to write what truly happened to the explorers sent to claim La Florida for the King of Spain. He intends to refute the “official” account, provided by Cabeza de Vaca, which leaves out anything that makes the explorers seem less than heroic.

As the story opens, protagonist Mustafa is living in Morocco with his mother, father, and brothers. He is an educated man who becomes a merchant, but when circumstances change, he feels he must sell himself into slavery to feed his family. He is renamed Estebanico by Spanish priests. He is purchased by a Spaniard who then offers him to Dorantes to pay a gambling debt. Dorantes takes him to the New World as part of the Narváez expedition.

This is the type of historical fiction I really enjoy. It is an adventure, filled with travels among the native peoples. We get a sense of what life was like in the 1500s in North America. It is believable that the official account would leave out anything that reflected poorly on those telling the story. It is based on the author’s extensive research, with sources provided in the appendix.

Toward the end, there are groups of Indians following the explorers, when they reconnect with the Spanish in Mexico. I felt like I wanted to warn them not to follow! Readers will know this part of history does not turn out well for them. The author made me care deeply about the protagonist and the native people of this historic period. I loved it!
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