"From the author of Apocalyptic Planet, an unsparing, vivid, revelatory travelogue through prehistory that traces the arrival of the First People in North America twenty thousand years ago and the artifacts that enable us to imagine their lives and fates. Scientists squabble over the locations and dates for human arrival in the New World. The first explorers were few, encampments fleeting. At some point in time, between twenty and forty thousand years...

When David and his parents arrive in Lusk, Wyoming, in 1889, they are not welcomed with open arms. As Chinese immigrants, they are all too familiar with the discrimination they immediately encounter at the general store. Nonetheless, their need to earn money before continuing eastward leads them to find work at John Bell Hatcher's archaeological dig site just outside of town. Soon David learns that the brilliant paleontologist is on the hunt for dinosaur...