Book excerpt: This is the tale of what men can and cannot do when they must do something or die. In late November, 1528, a handful of Spaniards, survivors of an ill-starred expedition to Florida, were washed ashore in the Gulf of Mexico. One of these was Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, thirty-eight and the lieutenant of the expedition. Despite the privations he endured - he was reduced to nakedness and enslaved by the Indians - Nuñez led tow other Spaniards and a Moor across the entire North American continent. The journey took eight grueling years. This story, told by a poet as well as a historian, bears comparison with Gibran's The Prophet, for it emphasiszes that "the power of maintaining life in others lives within each of us, and from each of us does it recede when unused"--Jacket.