“Don’t be late coming home,” said Henry’s mother.

“All right—if a bear doesn’t catch us,” said Henry.

Exploring is hard work. It makes one hungry. It can be a little alarming if one does seem to see a bear. And sometimes, although explorers do not get lost, they are not quite sure which way to go. All of which makes exploring what it is and makes Henry’s exploring worth reading about.

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This is the story of a wonderful, changing, reawakening world—the world of the Renaissance and Reformation. Measured by the lifetime of Columbus and his sons, this book spans the years from 1451-1539.

With Columbus as the central figure of this narrative, readers will also learn the fascinating stories of Prince Henry the Navigator, Ivan III of Russia, Gutenberg, Queen Isabella, Leonardo da Vinci, Mohammed II, the African ruler Nomi Mansa, Martin Luther, Erasmus, Albrecht Dürer, Copernicus, Michelangelo and many others.

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The man who challenged the Colorado, Major John Wesley Powell, was a small, bookish geology professor from a Midwestern farm. Despite his size and the constant pain from the Civil War wound that had cost him his arm, Powell’s twin passions–adventure and scientific exploration–drew him to the Colorado River.

For three months, he and nine crew members thrilled to riding the rapids and endured the backbreaking labor of transporting boats and cargo past rapids too dangerous to run. They discovered canyons of unsurpassed beauty and gave them names like Music Temple and Canyon of Lodore. They saved each other from drowning, and suffered together as their food supply dwindled to nearly nothing.

Excerpts from journals of crew members personalize the gripping text. Original paintings and a foldout map allow the reader to follow the expedition’s route and its adventures.

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Along the way, the author relates the colorful narratives of California’s past through the stories of men and women like Cabrillo, Viscaino, Junipero Serra, Kate Sessions, Kit Carson, Jedediah Smith and many more.

Drawing from journals of other notable visitors like Richard Henry Dana, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Sir Francis Drake, readers are given a window into life in California hundreds of years ago. O’Dell offers readers dramatic incidents seldom featured in text books on California history – like the worst peacetime disaster in the history of the United States Navy that occurred in the treacherous Jaws of the Devil near Point Conception.

Readers will delight in the story of Jedediah Strong Smith’s wrestling with a grizzly and the wilderness friend who stitched his ear and face back together – with no anesthesia, of course! Pirates have to play a part in a land so rich in coastline – and they do, with buried treasure on a Southern California isle known as Dead Man’s Island.

The stories of the discoverers, explorers and settlers of California have never been drawn so delightfully as they are under O’Dell’s pen. With his love of his native state, his knowledge of the landscape, sea life, and historical past of this region, O’Dells work continues to stand as an important contribution to the rich literature of the Golden State.

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Their text reflects many little- known facts not generally included in the typical biographies of Columbus. Readers will learn that it was the saga of Leif Erickson that was one of the inspirations for Columbus’s voyage to the East.

They will also learn that Columbus was such a skilled astronomer that he knew the exact date when the next eclipse of the moon was and used that knowledge to his advantage.

They will also learn that though “Columbus was a great man, he was not a modest man. He wanted too much, and so he did not get enough.”

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Told in Foster’s engaging and winsome style enhanced by her helpful chronologies and timelines, readers will learn of the religious, cultural and scientific changes that ushered in a new frontier of exploration and discovery.

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