Columbia — Pamela Jekel

The scope of Columbia -- the first epic saga of our country's final courageous thrust into the continental unknown, the Pacific Northwest -- is as massive as the Columbia River itself. The story begins nine thousand years ago, when the river was new, and unfolds in a magnificent family portrait spanning five generations, from the end of the eighteenth century to the present.

At the head of the ancient family is Ilchee, a Chinook Indian princess married to a white trader, who founds a dynasty of rare courage; Caleb, her son, who must learn to live in the white world of Fort Vancouver; Suzanna, who makes the arduous trip across the continent, battling humiliation, death, and even love; Isaac, their son, who builds a logging empire only to discover that destiny, not timer, is king; Ning Ho, Isaac's Chinese mistress, who teaches him even more of life than of pleasure; and finally Will, who rejects his father's vision to power his own -- the building of the Grand Coulee Dam -- and Leona, his wife, whose secret threatens to destroy everything the family has worked to create.

Columbia is a rich, vivid canvas of heroes and scoundrels, of men and women and their dreams of land, gold, timber, salmon and power -- dreams that begin when a nomad hunter kills a mastodon and end with an archaeology team working frantically to uncover evidence of that killing before the Columbia's waters rise to cover the past forever -- and a family destiny that proves "some things must be believe to be seen.