Image a person who defies the norms of longevity of the nineteenth century and who lives to give his firsthand account of many of the great events in American history. He would tell his story to a young family member who comes home from college and suddenly realizes that the old man who showed up at his parents' house was one of the most amazing heroes in American history. James Bowman went undetected from American history. The life of James Bowman was both ambiguous and undocumented for he lived a life behind the scenes. His life experiences placed him in the middle of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the Franciscan mission system, the California gold rush, the Discovery of Seattle, the Civil War, the Indian wars of the Great Plains, and the completion of the transcontinental railroad. James Bowman, during his long lifetime, either knew or had close encounters with Daniel Boone, Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and General Grenville Dodge; yet little trace of James Bowman exists in the journals of American history. This novel is a vivid story of the robust and short American history from the Lewis and Clark Expedition and Manifest Destiny to the birth of the Model T and the automobile, and is an amazing tale of an American hero whose complete story was never told until now.