Jedidiah Smith, a young man from Pennsylvania, travels west to seek his fortune in the fur trade and explore the upper Missouri River.

From the back cover: "Captains Lewis and Clark explored a wilderness where life was sacred and death commonplace. Their band of daring young American soldiers pitted themselves against fearless Indian warriors and callous fortune-seekers in search of furs in the uncharted world of the great Northwest. "Into this world stepped a young woman, who sought the man that no one really knew. And amid the harsh realities of the new frontier, she traveled a road to passion. "Follow Lewis and Clark through the great American landscape as they guide fifty rugged men and one beautiful woman on the trail to NORTHWEST GLORY."

In the 1830's the possibilities of an expanding frontier were limitless. But so too was the fierce competition among fur traders, the violence, lust and ruthlessness of the men and women who explored the continent. Pitted against the rapacious American Fur Company, independent mountain men struggled for their rightful share of a new land. The deadly challenge of a depraved enemy must destroy the lives or ignite the courage of these brave and resourceful loners.

The wilderness. It was a brutal force, a powerful magnet drawing Boone away from the woman he loved and the children he fathered … into the savage unknown. Rebecca Boone watched him go and waited for his return … her heart aching and filled with passion … not knowing that another man waited nearby, ready to take her into his arms … and all the while the dream of a promised land turned into a nightmare of personal torment as the lone frontiersman blazed his way along the … WESTWARD TRAIL.

Men feared the myth. Women loved the man. — From the back of the book: — This is Kit Carson, the man behind the myth... — A hard drinker, a fierce fighter, a man of relentless action. Alone, he explored a wilderness as wild and untamed as the grizzlies who roamed at his side. Single-handedly, he charted the merciless wilderness that lay just beyond the horizon. He was a man who survived with his knife and gun, who loved too often and too well, who gave to quarter and asked none. A man who took scalps like a warrior and won hearts like a gentleman. A man tuned to the rush of water, the hoot of an owl, the cry of a coyote. Pioneer, lover, soldier, father, killer, mountain man—a legend in his own time—Kit Carson was known throughout the West as a man of courage and strength, a man equal to the challenges of a land that offered no mercy.

Mass market paperback.

Francis Parkman (September 16, 1823 – November 8, 1893) was an American historian, best known as author of The Oregon Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life and his monumental seven-volume France and England in North America. These works are still valued as history and especially as literature, although the biases of his work have met with criticism. He was also a leading horticulturist, briefly a Professor of Horticulture at Harvard University and the first leader of the Arnold Arboretum, and author of several books on the topic.

mass market paperback