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Introduction:

Richard Halliburton died as spectacularly as he lived, disappearing with fourteen others in a typhoon while crossing the Pacific in a gaudily beautiful Chinese junk. The spectacular craft was slated to be an attraction at the 1939 San Francisco Golden Gate International Exposition. The colorful passing of this adventurous soul at the age of thirty-nine was as melodramatic as any fledging script writer might contrive yet it was an excruciatingly appropriate ending to an unparalleled career of adventuring, writing, and lecturing.

Halliburton was a swashbuckling, romantic figure as prominent in his day as fellow risk takers Amelia Earhart and Lawrence of Arabia. Although he was a superstar of another era, his life story with all its paradoxes and convolutions is unquestionably relevant to today’s issues. The Press took potshots at him just like they do at popular figures today. They seemed to resent his spectacular accomplishments so they greeted those considerable feats and his seven best-sellers with derision. Some did it because he worked at being macho. Some did it because they knew he was gay. Some were just annoyed at this Princeton graduate who uncharacteristically sneaked train rides in India and lodged at YMCAs. Many were disconcerted that this robust adventurer was at the same time an incurable romantic. Like today’s romantic figures, Halliburton had to struggle to hold on to his image before it slipped away.

In the 1920s and 1930s, his was a household name signifying adventure, romance and daring. He pulled off arduous, outrageous stunts and passed off their commission as humorously routine. He was just as liable to rhapsodize about the Persian poet Hafiz as he was to get himself jailed on Gibraltar for taking unauthorized pictures of gun emplacements. He chocked more rollicking adventure into his short life than any other “travel/adventure� guru of his day even thought of. He also racked up more controversy and left behind more mysteries, admiration and antagonism than any of them.

Halliburton and contemporary Thomas Wolfe both glamorized the lure of the lonely train whistle, promising and delivering on the magic of elsewhere. Both wrote of restlessly wandering and seeking. Both were escapists who, while exorcising their own demons, enthralled millions. Though Wolfe’s literary meanderings were more cerebral, Halliburton’s were erudite enough. His antics were certainly more titillating.

His life was a redolent mixture of accomplishment and failure, perseverance and capitulation, justifiable braggadocio and unabashed fibbing, humility, and boastfulness—with a generous helping of filial devotion thrown in.

His feats of derring-do were unique and infinitely memorable but the real contribution to the millions he thrilled may be of a more cerebral stripe. He stimulated the cultural awareness of a whole generation by cleverly mixing dollops of history, geography, art and architecture into his breath-taking adventure ramblings, thereby implanting a spark of intellectualism where it might have never nested otherwise.

The following is my interpretation of that rich life with accolades and brickbats equally applied.
A Shooting Star Meets the Well of Death, Why and How Richard Halliburton Conquered the World

Good Morning
Your introduction is interesting.
What I noticed was you told too much early in the plot. Remove all the back stories for later drip-feeding into the book at a later day.
I suggest kick-starting your book with a short 'hook' about Halliburton and how he died. Simpler the better.
Perhaps:

Nothing ever stopped Richard all his life, except the sea. He drowned.

I don't know enough about your book so I'll pause there.

Good luck with you book and its adventures involving Richard.