Chapter 11 details the amateur nature of the overland company that was to travel over the Rockies to Fort Astoria. We might think in terms of expert outdoorsmen holding key positions, and we would be wrong. The key figures were essentially clerks! This is like organizing an expedition into the Amazon with a handful of my grocery clerk friends calling the shots, getting drunk, fighting, and swindling each other along the way!

Chapter 12 relates the arrival of rival fur trader and famed explorer David Thompson, who was travelling with two Iroquois badasses as bodyguards. Most modern readers will be surprised to find out how extensively certain eastern woodland warriors served their white allies in the far west.

In Chapter 13 we are treated to the ethnographic observations of the Chinooks and other tribes by Robert Stuart. The Chinooks were playing politics, trying to get exclusive access to Astoria, so that they could gouge the other tribes as middlemen. Finally, the men received news that the maniac Captain Thorn of the Tonquin had slapped a chief on Vancouver Island, resulting in the ship being boarded by angry warriors and the last remaining crew retreating to the powder magazine below decks—which was significant—and blew the ship up, taking many foes to hell with them. The saddest aspect of this news, in this reader’s eye, was the death of Thomas Work, the slave that had made good.

Amid the many trials described above is the charming story of a transgender Indian woman who announced that she was now a man, dressed like a man, acted like a man, and took a wife! She operated as an interpreter, as did many Native American women. There was also a meeting, by a member of the Overland expedition, with the aging Daniel Boone, who had continued his wandering ways and was found hunting beaver, making him a pioneer of both continental divides.

Laton McCartney arranged the text in such a way as to make it engaging and suspenseful throughout. He surely had a ball writing it.