This slim novel, brilliantly conceived and beautifully executed, provides a totally new look at Sacagawea, the Shoshoni woman who accompanied the Lewis and Clark Expedition for a large portion of their journey.
Told from her viewpoint, in stark and simple language, the story unfolds of a young woman whose life was a series of partings â stolen as a child from her family, traded to a man twice her age as wife, mother of an infant son born scant weeks before she was again uprooted from her adopted Mandan home to trek to the shores of an unimagined ocean in the company of men whose goals and culture were utterly alien to her. By juxtaposing Sacagawea's observations with excerpts from the journals of Lewis and Clark, the reader is given a deeper understanding of the chasm that separated the explorers from the peoples they met.
Glancy cleaves to historical accuracy whenever possible, stripping away much of the mythos surrounding the historical Sacagawea, yet creates a living and memorable, if fictionalized, character in its place.
Told from her viewpoint, in stark and simple language, the story unfolds of a young woman whose life was a series of partings â stolen as a child from her family, traded to a man twice her age as wife, mother of an infant son born scant weeks before she was again uprooted from her adopted Mandan home to trek to the shores of an unimagined ocean in the company of men whose goals and culture were utterly alien to her. By juxtaposing Sacagawea's observations with excerpts from the journals of Lewis and Clark, the reader is given a deeper understanding of the chasm that separated the explorers from the peoples they met.
Glancy cleaves to historical accuracy whenever possible, stripping away much of the mythos surrounding the historical Sacagawea, yet creates a living and memorable, if fictionalized, character in its place.
A fictional but very realistic account of the Lewis and Clark expidition. The author imagines Sacajawea's thoughts and feelings throughout the trip, while also narrating actual diary entries of Lewis and Clark.
