THE DAKOTA CIPHER: AN ETHAN GAGE ADVENTURE

THE DAKOTA CIPHER: AN ETHAN GAGE ADVENTURE
By William Dietrich
Harper Collins
ISBN: 978-0-06-156800-8 (Hardcover)
2009
Hardcover $26.99
Pages 368
Fiction

A globe-trotting Indiana Jones is how I describe Ethan Gage. THE DAKOTA CIPHER begins in France with Ethan Gage bedding Napoleon’s married sister, Pauline. Even though in previous times, Ethan worked with Benjamin Franklin and his electricity discoveries, Ethan has gained the reputation of a “savant” and his advice is well-heeded.
However, Ethan’s real talent is in getting himself into awkward situations, and somehow, through luck, manages to wangle out of them literally by a thread.

Maneuvering himself back to America, Ethan acquires a partnership with a Norwegian companion named Magnus Bloodhammer who has his own reasons for wanting to explore the vast probabilities of the Louisiana Territory. After meeting with Thomas Jefferson, the two are sent on a scouting expedition into this unexplored area. Spain, France, and the newly formed United States are all hoping to lay claim to this humongous region.

In actuality, this story occurs a few years before the Lewis and Clark’s expedition so it would be around the early years of 1800. Jefferson has expectations of this land being the home to wooly mammoths, blue-eyed Indians, and enough land that could take 1000 years to populate.

Magnus Bloodhammer’s true agenda is to prove that Norwegians originally claimed this area before the time or Columbus. He is on a quest to find evidence in the form of runes for his proof and specifically to find the mythical “Thor’s Hammer”.

This unlikely twosome manage to find constant trouble and have a temporary partnership with a few British citizens who are not quite who they really seem to be, a French voyageur, two women from the native blue-eyed members of the legendary Mandan’s, in their exploration of the Louisiana Territory from the Great Lakes and into the mighty Mississippi River and into areas of what we now know as Minnesota.

The characters are almost too realistic. Their flaws are well-exposed and make this rip-roaring story almost feel genuine. This is in an Indian Jones style where the characters jump from one misadventure in which he barely survives, into the next. Ethan Gage definitely is an example of “no rest for the wicked”.

William Dietrich has received a Pulitzer Prize for his work in journalism. He teaches at Western Washington University and spends much time as a naturalist and a historian. He has written four non-fiction books and THE DAKOTA CIPHER is his eighth fictional novel.