This purports to tell the story of the major participants of the famous Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804 to 1806 that explored the vast lands newly acquired from the French that trail-blazed the American West. From the beginning, which focused on Meriweather Lewis I found the writing graceless, with lots of awkward phrasing with literary pretensions. So much of the prose is close to unintelligible--when it's not crude. Here's a paragraph of the writing early on from the point of view of Sacagawea:
A sandbar, a shoal. She jumped. She ran through the water. Behind her, water drummed. Water glittered, bright white. This one died.
Definitely not the kind of novel I wanted to spend hundred of pages immersed in. Not happy in its company.
