"A born storyteller, a man strengthened with the uncommon melody of language, a literary outrider using his bend to describe in fiction the West that was." - True West. President Thomas Jefferson bought the sprawling Louisiana Territory form the French. It was up to the team of Lewis and Clark to hoist the Stars and Stripes over the distant northwestern frontier and to win an empire with three small boats and forty ragged volunteers. Among them was Francois Rivet - half French and half Pawnee - a young man on a quest of his own for a long lost father held captive by the Shoshones.