Author: Michael Crichton
Publisher: HarperCollins, 2017, 320 pages
I’m a huge fan of any author who uses real life as a background for a fictitious story. Think National Treasure movies even though the “history” isn’t 100% accurate. Dan Brown and Steve Berry are known for incorporating real-world events and technology into their adventures, and Michael Crichton is no stranger to this technique. Jurassic Park dealt with cloning technology, and Dragon Teeth ties in the real historical event of the late American 1800’s known as “The Bone Wars.”
The Bone Wars pitted two paleontologists, Edward Cope at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, and Othniel Marsh at the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale, in a desperate race to outdo one another in the discovery of fossils in the United States. These once amicable acquaintances would soon resort to lies, theft, destruction, and slander to destroy the other both socially and financially. Despite their disdain for one another, their work actually produced more than 136 discoveries of new species of dinosaurs.
Dragon Teeth follows young, fabricated Yale student William Johnson, who takes a $1,000 bet that he couldn’t last a whole summer on a fossil dig with Othniel Marsh in the wilds of the west. William takes that bet and attempts to convince the highly paranoid Othniel that he must go on this trip for undescribed personal reasons. Othniel doesn’t really need another digger on this summer’s hunt in Colorado, but he does need a photographer. William, destined to win the bet, states that he is skilled at the job and, once allowed to accompany the team, heads off to learn all he can about photography.
William soon discovers that the exciting tales of the west aren’t all that exciting in reality while he rides for days in a boring, hot train ride to the town of Cheyenne, Wyoming. It’s here that Othniel deserts William, thinking him a spy for Edward Cope, which he is not. The following morning, Edward, who just happens to be in Cheyenne, asks William to join his team as he, too, needs a photographer. Sides switched and the train loaded, they head off again in search of new discoveries.
From here, William learns how rough and tough the Wild West can really be as he confronts heat, hunger, thirst, rain, mud, and the constant threat of attack from native American Indians. The excavation is fruitful, but there is only enough room to take half of the discoveries back in one trip. Staying behind with the other half of the fossils, William ends up in Deadwood, South Dakota, where he makes a name for himself defending his precious cargo from the town’s dangerous riff-raff. With the help of the Earp brothers, Wyatt and Morgan, he escapes with his life and returns with his payload of bones and newfound fame.
This story isn’t the most intellectual of thrillers; at its core, it’s a western, but the writing style makes 320 pages read smoothly and quickly in just a few hours. I enjoyed this book because it took me back to my childhood in the Black Hills of South Dakota. I can still smell the pine trees so thick you can’t see more than 50 feet in some places or the plains so vast you can see for miles in any direction accompanied by a slight breeze swaying the tall grass like an ocean of currents. Think Dances With Wolves because it was all filmed there.
If you’re a Michael Crichton fan, you won’t be disappointed with his latest published book, which was written in 1974 but only published last year by his wife, Sherri. It’s been 10 years since Crichton passed away from his battle with cancer, and this is the third of his books released posthumously. Search Wikipedia to learn more about the fascinating Bone Wars.
