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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.
“In my seventh winter, when my head only reached my Appe’s 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 Baby’s cry.”
Among the most memorialized women in American history, Sacajewea served as interpreter and guide for Lewis and Clark’s 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.
Raised among the Lemhi Shoshone, in this telling the young Sacajewea is bright and bold, growing strong from the hard work of “learning all ways to survive”: gathering berries, water, roots, and wood; butchering buffalo, antelope, and deer; catching salmon and snaring rabbits; weaving baskets and listening to the stories of her elders. When her village is raided and her beloved Appe and Bia are killed, Sacajewea is kidnapped and then gambled away to Charbonneau, a French Canadian trapper.
Heavy with grief, Sacajewea learns how to survive at the edge of a strange new world teeming with fur trappers and traders. When Lewis and Clark’s 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 perseverance—the Indigenous woman’s story that hasn’t been told.
Keywords:
Sacajewea, Sacagawea, Sacajawea, Sacagewea, Lewis and Clark, MMIW, Indigenous, Corps of Discovery, Shoshone, Mandan, Hidasta, alternate histories, historical accounts, historical perspectives, Western expansion, experimental fiction, novel in verse, feminist fiction
ISBN:
9781571311450 Publish Date:
05/23/2023
Pages:
264
Size:
8.5 × 5.5 × 1 in
Weight:
15 oz
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Praise and Prizes
"Earling adds a much-needed Native woman’s perspective to Sacajewea’s story, bringing a note of resilience to her unflinching account of the white men’s violence and depredation: 'Women do not become their Enemy captors. We survive them.' This is a beautiful reclamation."
Publishers Weekly
“Earling’s Sacajawea rewrites the version of herself handed down through American history. Her life before the expedition comes into vivid focus, as do her complicated feelings about her role in charting the course for American imperialism.”
The Millions
Most Anticipated Books of 2023
“[The Lost Journals of Sacajewea] brings long-overdue reclamation to storytelling for Native voices everywhere.”
Motherly
“We all know the story of Sacajewea from the perspective of Lewis and Clark, but Earling reframes the narrative around Sacajewea’s voice.”
Garden & Gun
“This is easily one of the best works of literature this year. I loved it. In beautiful, impressionistic chapters that flow between prose, prose poetry, and poetry, Debra Magpie Earling centers Sacajewea in her own, vibrant world.”
Jennifer Martin, Tattered Cover, Denver, CO
“A much-anticipated and gorgeous book from Debra Magpie Earling. The Lost Journals of Sacajewea is immersive and engaging, drawing the reader into a new way of seeing what we think we know of the story of Sacajewea.”
Mara Panich, Fact & Fiction, Missoula, MT
“This book may be classified as a novel, but it arguably does more justice to Sacajewea’s story than many of the sanitized historical recounts of her life—not hiding the fact that she was stolen, sold, brutalized, and pregnant, all before the age of twelve. Earling wrote The Lost Journals of Sacajewea for the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition, now finally published in book form to read worldwide. Essential for any American History reader.”
Andrew King, Secret Garden, Seattle, WA
“If the Olympics awarded medals for feats of the imagination, this book would be good for the Gold. Marvelously dreamed, starkly and poetically told. The story of the Lewis and Clark Expedition will never be the same.”
Ted Kooser
author of Delights and Shadows
“Debra Magpie Earling’s gorgeous retelling of Sacajewea’s journey shatters modern-day narrative conventions and documented history. With mesmerizing language and incantatory rhythms, Earling delivers an urgent accounting from the true world in a work that feels more alive than written. Yes, alive in a way I didn’t recognize—yet still felt! How deeply, deeply I fell into this story. The bottom line is that The Lost Journals of Sacajewea is an awakening, a revelation, a devastating triumph, and a literary magic act.”
Adrianne Harun
author of A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain
“The Lost Journals of Sacajewea is a wonder! Earling reclaims Sacajewea from non-Native histories and characterizations and restores the fulness of her being. She unflinchingly depicts the complexities of a girl navigating layers of trauma, yet preserves Sacajewea’s agency and power. Earling’s Sacajewea tells us a new story, closer to the bone. In gorgeous, startling, revelatory prose, the author commands the English language in profound ways, shapes it to her purposes, and designs a new speech. The Lost Journals of Sacajewea is a literary masterpiece, a whirlwind of a story that made me shiver in response to its difficult beauty.”
Susan Power
author of Sacred Wilderness
“The Lost Journals of Sacajewea is a masterpiece, not just of historical fiction, but of any genre. This raw and bracing retelling of Sacajewea’s life is a thorough dismantling of the legend of the Corps of Discovery, to be sure. But in line after stunning line, Earling reveals Sacajewea in an astonishing and heartbreaking fullness. This sublime book will leave you shook and touched at once, on every single page.”
Smith Henderson
author of Make Them Cry
“Not since James Welch’s monumental Fools Crow has such an immersive work of narrative genius risen out of the West. In luminous, image-laden prose, as if by way of elemental reconstitution, Debra Magpie Earling awakens a voice that our American mythology had hoped would stay sleeping, and in so doing unearths The Lost Journals of Sacajewea, a harrowing—though ultimately triumphant—once-in-a-generation work of art.”
Chris Dombrowski
author of The River You Touch
“The Lost Journals of Sacajewea is an immensely moving and transcendental work of literature. Debra Magpie Earling masterfully tells a story with prose so determined and so full of light and beauty that it’s impossible to look away. This is a striking, elegant, and impressive work of art that persists in the reader’s mind even after the book has ended.”
Morgan Talty
author of Night of the Living Rez
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