For 37 years, the great American writer Mark Twain entertained a friendship of intellectual and historical significance with legendary explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley. These raconteurs from different sides of the cultural exchange admired and supported each other’s significant works and even worked together as journalists in the American West. The late great Oscar Hijuelos, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of THE MAMBO KINGS PLAY SONGS OF LOVE, was obsessed with this curious and enduring friendship and spent over 10 years researching and writing until his untimely death in 2013.

The result is TWAIN & STANLEY ENTER PARADISE, an uneven testament to this odd couple and their exploits in an America that they weren’t always particularly proud of --- especially on the issue of slavery.

"If you are a history buff who loves an intersection of different worlds, this novel will cause you to practically go mad with happiness."

The colorful Victorian backdrops of the story pale in comparison to the intended curiosity of the third main figure in the story, Dorothy Tennant, the bohemian artist/portrait painter who is also interested in psychic phenomenon. After the death of his beloved daughter, Susy, Twain turned to Tennant to take him and his wife on a jaunt through the spiritualist movement, where he consulted mediums and attended séances in which they tried to connect with their child. Tennant is a wild character, not bothered with restraints, caring little about how preposterous some of her adventures became. She dressed ostentatiously, calling attention to herself in a time when women were just starting to garner a little more prominence and not spend all their time wallowing in the background of every social setting. She is a boisterous companion but a stealthy one, too, understanding how the Twains could benefit from the exposure to the people on the fringes from whom she could hope to bring the grieving parents some closure on their situation.

However, the book is really the love story between the two men. Culled from unpublished diaries, it follows their many adventures in much the same way that a high-value reality show might in this day and age. Here they are in this exotic locale and another, one esteemed gentleman following another, exploring Cuba in search of Stanley’s adoptive father and exploring social kingdoms, literal ones, together with a similar sense of curiosity and devil-may-care insouciance. Hijuelos obviously loves these guys, but the combination of memoir, correspondence and general fiction writing tends to feel disjointed and random. It follows a narrative through line, but switching from one to the next could be disconcerting for a casual reader.

“I have lost the celestial spark for such ruminations,” Twain once told Stanley after they had weathered a long absence from each other’s lives. Twain was unsure of his status as a writer, and Stanley was a thoughtful and caring ear for him. However, the celestial spark is not front and center in this tome, in which Hijuelos almost pays too much attention to the details of what really happened to give the book a jolt and make it a livelier read. It is its plodding manner that might shut down some light readers of this otherwise fascinating material.

TWAIN & STANLEY ENTER PARADISE captures a time when technology was not a concern, and the wit and wisdom of these men were the main components of their adventurous dealings with one another. Hijuelos tends to be a little too reservedly reverential of the two gentlemen, but he is unable to keep their original and exciting personalities from demanding center stage throughout the book. If you are a history buff who loves an intersection of different worlds, this novel will cause you to practically go mad with happiness. If only Mr. Hijuelos had had a little more time…