Book excerpt: In this true story of adventure, author Jack Nisbet re-creates the life and times of David Thompson-fur trader, explorer, surveyor, and mapmaker. From 1784 to 1812, Thompson explored western North America and was the first to chart the entire length of the Columbia River. His field journals provide the earliest written accounts of the natural history and indigenous cultures of the region, and Nisbet uses them to guide his own discovery of the Northwest Territory some two centuries later. Book jacket.