Meriwether Lewis, commander of the famed Lewis and Clark Expedition that explored the newly purchased Louisiana Territory from 1804–06, returned home from this perilous journey with every hope as well as his country's expectations of a bright and productive future. Yet within three years, the 35-year-old Lewis was dead in a lonely inn along the Natchez Trace in rural Tennessee, the victim of two gunshots. Various medical and psychological theories have been proposed by historians and others to account for his mysterious death, which was originally reported as a suicide. The authors of “So Hard to Die” provide an in-depth analysis of the various theories that still swirl around his death and draw on their professional backgrounds as a physician and a clinical psychologist to vividly and convincingly explain the mystery of Lewis's death.
