This Vast Land is a historical novel

Historical novel

According to Encyclopædia Britannica, a historical novel is-Development:An early example of historical prose fiction is Luó Guànzhōng's 14th century Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which covers one of the most important periods of Chinese history and left a lasting impact on Chinese culture.The...

 written by American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 author Stephen Ambrose

Stephen Ambrose

Stephen Edward Ambrose was an American historian and biographer of U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. He was a long time professor of history at the University of New Orleans and the author of many best selling volumes of American popular history...

. Published in 2003 by Simon & Schuster

Simon & Schuster

Simon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins...

 Children's Publishing, it a fictionalized account in the form of a diary written by George Shannon, the youngest member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition

Lewis and Clark Expedition

The Lewis and Clark Expedition, or ″Corps of Discovery Expedition" was the first transcontinental expedition to the Pacific Coast by the United States. Commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson and led by two Virginia-born veterans of Indian wars in the Ohio Valley, Meriwether Lewis and William...

. The book details the expedition from the view of Shannon, who although beginning the expedition as the most inexperienced member, slowly matures into one of the expedition's most important figures.