This Vast Land: A Young Man's Journal of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (by Stephen E. Ambrose)

George is only 17 when he introduces himself to Captain Merriweather Lewis and asks to join his expedition. At first Lewis brushes him off, but George is persistent. When Lewis reluctantly takes him on, he gives George a blank journal book and orders him to fill it out every day. George keeps it faithfully, though of course not every day, for the three years of the Expedition, and sporadically for the next 30 years of his life. George, a well-educated city boy, knows nothing of the wilderness, hunting, or soldiering, but he is a quick study, and his enthusiasm and loyalty prove to be even greater qualities. He becomes a valuable asset to the Expedition on their arduous journey. The team encounters bear and Indian attacks, experiences severe privations and illness, crosses the Rockies on foot, canoes through rapids and the waves of the Pacific, and traverses across forbidding and almost inaccessible lands as they travel all the way across the continent and back again. Along the way George learns the skills of a hunter, soldier, and mountain man, falls in love with an Indian woman, and comes to love the wilderness so much that he plans to return there to live with his wife and child after the Expedition is over.

he Corps' hunter, Drewyer, takes George under his wing, and soon he is learning to hunt better than most of the men who were born to it.There doesn't seem to be a word adequate to the task of describing what George and the rest of the Corps of Discovery go through -- arduous, dangerous, they don't even come close. 

The late Stephen Ambrose, world-renowned historian, completed this fictionalized journal of the Lewis and Clark expedition's youngest member, George Shannon, just before his death. This book -- his only work of fiction -- is pure adventure, unvarnished with the tricks of the fiction-writer's craft. This is no character study; the personality and experiences of George Shannon are completely invented, and he is used primarily as a lens to show the experience from a young person's point of view. Teens will find it fascinating and gripping.

The sometimes salty and deliberately fractured language is accessible to younger readers, but an extremely graphic sex scene in the middle of the book will make adults hesitate to give it to elementary or middle school students. Nevertheless, for high school students learning about this amazing journey, this book may be the best place to start.