The resulting nineteen essays depict Americans not often heard from: the restaurant owner in Bethel on Alaska’s west coast; the paper mill foreman in Rumford, Maine; the Floridian who supplies the mud rubbed on all major league baseballs. These are resourceful people who in various ways continue the American pioneer tradition. Appropriately, the first essay in the book details Lamb’s retracing, as closely as present day highways permit, the route of Lewis and Clark’s expedition to the Pacific.