The Lost Journals of Sacajewea

From the award-winning author of Perma Red comes a devastatingly beautiful novel that challenges prevailing historical narratives of Sacajewea.

Raised among her people, the Lemhi Shoshone, the young Sacajewea is fierce and bold, growing strong from her relationships to the nonhuman world and from the hard work of “learning all ways to survive”: gathering berries, water, roots, and wood; preparing buffalo, antelope, deer, and fish; snaring rabbits, weaving carry baskets, and listening to the stories of her elders. Her universe, however, is on the brink of upheaval. When her village is marauded by enemy raiders, and her Appe and Bia are killed, Sacajewea is stolen and then gambled away to Charbonneau, a French Canadian trapper and trader.

Heavy with grief, Sacajewea learns how to survive at the edge of a strange new world teeming with Native and non-Native fur trappers and traders. When Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery 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 the world she loves. Her story is a gift of triumph, perseverance, and resistance—the Native woman’s story that hasn’t been told.

With lyrical, dreamlike prose that collapses space and time, The Lost Journals of Sacajewea is an immersive, astonishing work of art and a powerful reclamation, recentering Sacajewea as the arbiter of her own history.