The Alchemist's Dream
By John Wilson
4/5
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About this ebook
From the Governor General's Award Jury: "In this engrossing historical adventure, John Wilson paints a vivid picture of a bygone era involving Henry Hudson’s fateful search for the elusive Northwest Passage, an alchemist, mysterious passengers, and enigmatic maps. The Alchemist’s Dream fascinates from start to finish. In the fall of 1669, the Nonsuch returns to London with a load of fur from Hudson Bay. It brings something else, too--the lost journal from Henry Hudson’s tragic search for a passage to Cathay in 1611. In the hands of a greedy sailor, the journal is merely an object to sell. But for Robert Bylot--a once-great maritime explorer--the book is a painful reminder of a past he’d rather forget. As Bylot relives his memories of a plague-ridden city, of the mysterious alchemist John Dee, and of mutiny in the frozen wastes of Hudson Bay, an age-old mystery is both revealed and solved. Set against the thrilling backdrop of the quest for the Northwest Passage, The Alchemist’s Dream is a riveting tale of exploration, ambition, and betrayal."
John Wilson
Qualified in agricultural science, medicine, surgery and psychiatry, Dr John Wilson practised for thirty-seven years, specialising as a consultant psychiatrist. In Sydney, London, California and Melbourne, he used body-oriented therapies including breath-awareness, and re-birthing. He promoted the ‘Recovery Model of Mental Health’ and healing in general. At Sydney University, he taught in the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, within the School of Public Health. He has worked as Technical Manager of a venture-capital project, producing health foods in conjunction with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). Dissenting from colonial values, he saw our ecological crisis as more urgent than attending urban distress. Almost thirty years ago, instead of returning to the academy, he went bush, learning personal downsizing and voluntary simplicity from Aboriginal people. Following his deepening love of the wild through diverse ecologies, he turned eco-activist, opposing cyanide gold mining in New South Wales and nuclear testing in the Pacific. Spending decades in the Australian outback, reading and writing for popular appreciation, he now fingers Plato, drawing on history, the classics, art, literature, philosophy and science for this book about the psychology of ecology – eco-psychology – about the very soul of our ecocidal folly.
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Reviews for The Alchemist's Dream
1 rating1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A fresh, intriguing hypothesis to the solution of the mystery surrounding Henry Hudson's last fatal voyage. This is a story of Henry Hudson but much more so a story of Robert Bylot, an obscure explorer, and John Dee, a geographer and occultist. The tale of how these three people's lives may have intertwined is fascinating. The book does start off very slow, there is a heavy hand of history and geography to set the scene which borders on being pedantic. I think the reader would have been better served with an illustrated map on the endpapers and really am dismayed that one wasn't included. However, the author manages to provoke our interest in the characters enough until the mid-point of the novel where the plot line picks up and the reading flows much easier. This is a Young Adult novel and suitable for the upper age range as this realistic portrait of life on the high-seas includes very graphic and gory battle scenes. Overall, this is a fascinating topic and a glimpse into an era where the boundaries between science and magic were blurry. Recommended.