As the son of the fur trapper and the Shoshone woman, Sacajawea, who were guides for the Lewis and Clark expedition, Charbonneau was a man divided between worlds. As a result, his life took a series of astonishing turns and left him painfully torn between opposing cultures.
He lived with a prince in a castle in Germany and a tipi with the Rocky Mountain fur trappers. At one time he wore a stylish frock coat and top hat, at another times, dirty buckskins. He conversed as easily with a marquise as a Crow Indian chief. And at the age of only thirty-eight, he had to make an irreversible choice between lives.
Set in one of the most dramatic periods in American history, Charbonneau is a moving novel based upon the fundamental conflict in the American West during the first half of the nineteenth century-the clashes of value between the white man and the red man. Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, son of Sacajawea and Baptiste Charbonneau, is a figure who embodies that clash.
Now, in the great story telling tradition, Win Blevins creates a magnificent set of characters, imaginatively reconstructs events that are beyond historical recovery, and bring Charbonneau and the ear in which he lived superbly to life.
From this rich material Win Blevins has spun a story of epic scope and lyrical eloquence.
