The Lost Journals of Sacajewea

Winner of the American Book Award Winner of the Montana Book Award Winner of the PNBA Book Award In my seventh winter, when my head only reached my Appes rib, a White Man came into camp. Bare trees scratched sky. Cold was endless. He moved through trees like strikes of sunlight. My Bia said he came with bad intentions, like a Water Babys cry. Among the most memorialized women in American history, Sacajewea served as interpreter and guide for Lewis and Clarks Corps of Discovery. In this visionary novel, acclaimed Indigenous author Debra Magpie Earling brings this mythologized figure vividly to life, casting unsparing light on the men who brutalized her and recentering Sacajewea as the arbiter of her own history. Here, the young Sacajewea is bright and bold, growing strong from the hard work of learning all ways to survive. When her village is raided, Sacajewea is kidnapped and then gambled away to Charbonneau, a French Canadian trapper. Heavy with grief, she learns how to survive at the edge of a strange new world. When Lewis and Clarks expedition party arrives, Sacajewea knows she must cross a vast and brutal terrain with her newborn son, the white man who owns her, and a company of men who wish to conquer and commodify the world she loves. Written in lyrical, dreamlike prose, The Lost Journals of Sacajewea is an astonishing work of art and a powerful tale of perseverancethe Indigenous womans story that hasnt been told.