ON EARTH’S REMOTEST BOUNDS is the story of the far-frontier bastion called Fort Atkinson, built on the Council Bluff made famous by the Indian parley held with Lewis and Clark there in 1804. It is a saga of a fledgling, struggling nation with a most tenuous toehold on a massive territory. The fort faces threats from Indians, British, and nature itself. It is a fascinating and brutal time little chronicled, falling between the Revolution and the main westward expansion, when American attitudes, character, and policies were being shaped. It is filled with names of heroes like Riley and Leavenworth, the friends and relatives of Lewis and Clark, famed explorers like Long and Kearney, and folklore figures like Jim Bridger, Mike Fink, and Hugh Glass. Year One:BLOOD and WATER chronicles the first year of the thousand-man expedition as it battles hundreds of miles up the wild Missouri on primitive steamboats and keels to reach the bluff and build its first fort. Here the exhausted men must survive a winter plagued by severe weather, food shortages, a scurvy epidemic felling hundreds, and a devastating flood. They hang on by courage and sheer doggedness to begin a new fortress atop the high Council Bluff.