Kathryn Lasky has long been fascinated by the west of the 19th century. She has written several books set in the early American west including Beyond the Divide, which told the story of the Gold Rush of 1849; Alice Rose and Sam set in the silver mining town of Virginia City, Nevada; as well as The Bone Wars about the first excavations for fossil dinosaur bones in the Montana and Wyoming territories in the 1870s.

“I think sometimes,” says Lasky, “that I have a special gene that responds to landscapes and the landscape of the west has an incredibly strong appeal for me. Whenever I write a book about the west, in addition to the human characters, there is another character and that is the land itself . . . Imagine what Lewis and Clark must have thought as this magnificent country unfolded before them.”

For Lasky to be able to write a fictional diary of the Lewis and Clark expedition was a dream come true. She had often thought of writing about the expedition but it almost seemed simply too large, too big. And Lewis and Clark were as mighty in their heroism as the powerful river they traveled.

“It would be like trying to dam a river to even attempt to tell the story of these two men. They loomed too large for me to grasp. I could never seem to get a hook into it. But then when the My Name Is America series began I realized that there could be a hook — a boy, slightly damaged by a rough and tumble life, maybe a bit frightened, but gritty and determined.”

Kathryn Lasky says that “Augustus Pelletier just showed up in my imagination — begging to go on the expedition — a natural, if unfinished hero. The perfect boy for this book.”

In Kathryn Lasky’s mind the Lewis and Clark expedition is one of the greatest accomplishments in American History. It was not only that these men were brave, but they had wit and imagination. Kathryn found that one of the most moving parts in the entire men’s journals was the occasion during which Lewis and Clark held a vote to decide on who should be Sergeant Floyd’s replacement. This was not only the first election held west of the Mississippi but the first time a black man and a slave, York, was allowed to participate in the democratic process on the continent of America.

Kathryn Lasky has received many awards for her writing, including the Newbery Honor, the Boston Globe – Horn Book Award, and the Washington Post Children’s Book Guild Award for Nonfiction. She is the author of more than forty books for children and adults, including, most recently, the Guardians of Ga’Hoole and the Wolves of the Beyond series, as well as the Daughters of the Sea books. She won a Newbery Honor for her book Sugaring Time, a National Jewish Book Award for The Night Journey, and the Washington Post Children’s Book Guild Award for her contribution to children’s nonfiction. She has also written Marie Antoinette, Princess of Versailles, and several Dear America diaries, in addition to two historical fiction books — Beyond the Burning Time, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, and True North — for Scholastic. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her family.