Summary Of Nicholas Applin's The Everywhere Spirit

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Nicholas Applin’s historical fiction novel, The Everywhere Spirit, develops themes such as the joys and responsibilities of freedom, the unethical practice of slavery and the price of greed and cruelty in an epic tale traversing North America from the slave-owning South to the wild West. In early 19th century St. Louis, the slave Sebastian Fleet kills his brutal master, Peter Laroque, to save a prostitute from torture, rape and murder. Sebastian escapes via the Missouri River, always making his way westwards to the unconquered frontier to preserve his hard-won liberty. However, Laroque’s vengeful sons, Edward, Jacques and George are on his trail, hunting the runaway slave by joining trapping brigades and crossing unknown and dangerous country to find and murder Sebastian to restore the Laroque name. …show more content…

Thus, The Everywhere Spirit has the flavour of old-timey Westerns but with the focus on a man freeing himself from the shackles of slavery in a grand setting. Applin brought the topography of the country Sebastian and his newfound allies have to endure to life. The author has a deft touch regarding the characters; they feel real, and even such historical figures as Jedediah Smith left their unique traces in the novel and never came across as contrived. Sebastian Fleet simply flowered once he freed himself. We meet him as a faceless, defeated slave in the beginning of the novel, but as he withstood natural hardships on his journey to the West and fought for his autonomy, he becomes an individual rising to heights undreamed of by slaves. He is the warrior Stormcrow in his adoptive Mandan village and later, a leader of a trapping brigade earning the grudging respect of the whites under his