Dangerous Latitudes
"a compelling tale of the complex history of the Republic of Texas."
For a decade, from 1836 to 1846, what is now the State of Texas was an independent nation, the Republic of Texas. In his Author Notes London writes, “[M]ost of the extraordinary events of that period are little known except to scholars of Texas history. They are a hidden trove of war, audacity, bravado and villainy, courage and cruelty, yet bookshelves are especially thin on historical fiction during the ten years of the Republic of Texas . . . Dangerous Latitudes is my attempt to open a window onto it.”
It was a confusing time. Texans could not define or describe the extent of their republic or many of its borders. Mexico did not recognize the independence of Texas. To remedy at least some of the confusion, Mirabeau Lamar, president of Texas, while visiting New Orleans, meets Alexandre LaBranche, a surveyor, and says, “I make you this proposition, sir. Texas will pay you the sum of ten thousand dollars, United States dollars, to map the boundaries of the republic.”
LaBranche, with no other prospects, accepts. His father had just ordered him off the family plantation, and he was not welcome back as he was “a failure.” Within minutes of crossing the Sabine River into Texas to take up his task, he is set upon by thieves who rob him of everything. Wandering in the dark, he stumbles into a ravine and is trapped in brambles to be rescued by Noeme. “He could tell from her voice, from the slight dialect and partial words, that she was a slave, maybe a teenage girl, maybe not.” Seeking rescue at a farm, the woman there describes the girl as “a wisp of a girl, a slender, soft skinned Black girl, dressed in a shift and wearing a shawl on her neck.”
This wisp of a girl, Noeme, shadows LaBranche despite his efforts to send her away. Her presence is a mystery to him and will be to readers, as the mysterious girl plays, perhaps, the major role in the story.
LaBranche, owing to a confusion of crimes at the river crossing where he was attacked, meets opposition from every Texas official he meets, up to and including Sam Houston, who has replaced the disgraced Mirabeau Lamar as president. Houston tears up LaBranche’s contract, believing the surveyor to be a spy for Mexico, and tells him, “You are indeed going to the Rio Grande River to make maps . . . You are going to find and make a map of every Mexican presidio . . . Or, you will be hanged. . . .” The threat of hanging by Texans is one the surveyor will face again and again.
Ignoring Houston’s instructions, LaBranche—saddled by circumstance and Houston’s orders with the men who robbed him, Pennant and Alonzo—is captured by the Mexican army. They, too, believe he is a spy and threaten, on several occasions, to put him before a firing squad. He claims he represents the Queen of England and English banks, sent to examine lands pledged to Great Britain as security for loans extended to finance Mexico’s independence from Spain. The guise earns him free passage and assistance, as well as suspicion, from the Mexicans. LaBranche plays the Texians and Mexicans off one another repeatedly to stay alive. A lost silver mine enters the picture, along with numerous other complications and distractions, as LaBranche and his companions dodge death time and again, prompting a belief in the surveyor that “We are no longer an imposter and two horse thieves. We are men of action.”
Through it all, Noeme pops up from time to time, here and there, always affecting the course of the story. How she manages to quickly travel vast distances across Texas is left to the reader’s imagination, as is her ability to devise any and all manner of intrigue and deception to escape dicey situations. It is not until halfway through the novel that we learn Noeme is not at all who we have been led to believe but is a sophisticated agent in the employ of Sam Houston. “He liked not only that Noeme was invisible and willing to go anywhere on a moment’s notice, but also that she was smart. He liked that no one would believe a Black girl was free or that she could read.”
LaBranche is as surprised as readers will be by the revelation. “Noeme, Alexander concluded, was most likely the daughter of a white man and an Indian woman who was the daughter of an Indian man and a Black woman, or perhaps a Black man and an Indian woman.” She tells him, “I am a free woman. I was never a slave . . . And whether I am negro or not, I cannot say. I do not think of myself in that way. I am from the Neosho.” The dialect she sometimes employs is a guise. “It is a voice I use when I am supposed to be thought a slave,” she tells him. “It works quite well with men like you.”
While riveting at times, and driven by mystery, action, and intrigue, Dangerous Latitudes seems, at times, contrived and complicated to the point of confusion. It also could have benefitted from better copyediting. Still and all, it is a compelling tale of the complex history of the Republic of Texas.