The Road to Hardscrabble

In the mid-1850s, long before he was a household name, Ulysses S. Grant was posted with his regiment three thousand miles and several universes from his wife and children—to San Francisco, Oregon, and the wilds of Northern California. Over the course of two difficult years, he spiralled downward toward the depths of personal disintegration before hitting bottom, finding himself again, and returning to the family that he loved, a new man, and a civilian. The Civil War was yet to be, but Grant had already passed through his personal fire, and come out whole. This novel, narrated by its principal, tells the story of the devious machinations of the regimental sutler, Elijah Prock, of Grant’s financial ruin, of the ruin and resurrection of his long-time servant, Corporal Stutts—and of Maggie, Stutts’s wife, nursemaid to Grant’s young son, a beloved member of the family, and “the only other woman I ever loved.” A colorful portrait of the West in its brightest spasm—after the Gold Rush—the story is told in the voice of a younger Grant than many readers will be familiar with, a Grant who had been president of the Literary Club at West Point, a Grant who, though quite bleakly at times, still feelingfully portrays his long and wracking journey out and home again, on the Road to Hardscrabble.