Winner of the Montana Book Award

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.

• Author participating in Winter Institute 2023 Author Luncheon; galleys available during the conference; intimate bookseller dinner with the author and publisher
• Sampler copies available for booksellers at Heartland Fall Forum 2022 in St. Louis
• Major galley campaign, with galleys available for the sales force, major media, fiction media, regional media, Indigenous media, influential authors, booksellers and librarians; digital galleys available for download on Edelweiss
• Major media outreach, positioning this as a singular and important book that will change the literary canon
• Major Indie Next campaign, with bookseller outreach focused on Mountains & Plains region
• Advertising in Shelf Awareness and MPIBA
• Major promotions for Native American Heritage (November) to set the book up for strong sales through the year
• Newsletter promotion via the publisher to readers, sales and academic lists of more than 30K contacts
• Academic outreach to seed book in classrooms for literary and Indigenous studies courses
• Reader's Guide available for download
• Major launch in Missoula, Montana

About the Author

Debra Magpie Earling is the author of Perma Red and The Lost Journals of Sacajewea. An earlier version of the latter, written in verse, was produced as an artist book during the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition. She has received both a National Endowment for the Arts grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is retired from the University of Montana, where she was named professor emeritus in 2021. She is Bitterroot Salish.

Reviews

Praise for The Lost Journals of Sacajewea

"[In The Lost Journals of Sacajewea] the suffering-and bold, ingenious agency-of women held as captives by both Native and Euro-Americans is rendered with special vividness [. . .] The narration is rich in realistic detail but animated by a dreamlike intensity [. . .] Throughout the text, Sacajewea memorably enacts what Gerald Vizenor dubs survivance, the negotiation of existential challenges with a spirited, oppositional inventiveness. A profoundly moving imagining of the impressions and contributions of a major historical figure."-Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"At its surface, this may be a novel, but deeper down, it's a spirit- song, an invocation, a magical incantation. The language simultaneously keeps Sacajewea unknowable and gives us a path to greater understanding. The poetic prose elevates it from a tragic story to a founding mythic ethos of America. In this, Earling has given us a new model for the literature of the West. The Lost Journals of Sacajewea changes how novels will be written, or at least it should."-Marc Beaudin, Big Sky Journal

"[The Lost Journals of Sacajewea] offers new perspective on what is known, and debated, about the life of Sacajewea, including her age, her marriage to a French fur-trader (Toussaint Charbonneau), and her experience as the only woman traveling on the 1804-1806 Corp of Discovery expedition with Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. In poetic prose, Earling interweaves factual accounts of Sacajewea's life with a first-person narrative deeply rooted in the physicality of landscape and brutality of the times."-Jessica Gigot, Seattle Times

"[The Lost Journals of Sacajewea is] an impressionistic, poetic account, one that vividly renders external hardships and internal thoughts, giving equal weight to each. [. . .] it delivers a uniquely thorough perspective on the mind of a particular young woman, both ordinary and extraordinary. In this way, we come to understand Sacajewea more deeply-certainly more than we understand the men of famous names like Lewis and Clark. lt's a book to enjoy like a river: you give yourself over to it and follow where it takes you."-Greer Macallister, Chicago Review of Books

"Earling lets Sacajewea tell her own story, in her own voice, revealing a complex, determined woman who makes hard choices in the face of ongoing loss and violence. It's a beautiful and ultimately hopeful novel that lays bare many important truths about American history and myth-making."-Book Riot, 20 Must-Read Books of Indigenous Historical Fiction

"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 'shatters' conventional form to create a movement that is akin to poetry but much more dynamic. Earling bends and slants words, electrifying Sacajewea's attempts to comprehend and describe what is happening in her often violent and unstable world .[ . . .] Earling creates immersive landscapes where women like Sacajewea and Louise Yellow Knife [from Perma Red] are given an opportunity to speak; she writes with distinct, unflinching attention even as her characters suffer brutal physical and sexual violence."-Maggie Neal Doherty, High Country News

Book Information
ISBN 9781571311450
Author Debra Magpie Earling
Format Hardback
Page Count 264
Imprint Milkweed Editions
Publisher Milkweed Editions