While Stephen Ambrose was writing "Undaunted Courage," I accompanied him one summer canoeing up the Missouri River retracing the footsteps of Lewis and Clark. The pristine scenery was magnificent, and at night, around a roaring Montana campfire, we would read passages from the journals out loud. The journals, overflowing with keen observations, illuminate Lewis as both gifted writer and astute naturalist. But what is missing from these priceless journals -- or for that matter, from the hundreds of books written about the expedition itself -- are introspective character profiles of the leading players in the rugged drama.

Brian Hall, author of two previous novels and a handful of nonfiction books, has brilliantly accomplished what Ambrose hoped to do. "I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company" -- the title is Lewis' words to Clark inviting him on the expedition -- fills in the blank pages of the Lewis and Clark journals, offering marvelous character studies of five key participants in the historical trek.

Hall, a spellbinding prose-stylist, writes with the kind of ethereal poetic sweep found in the historical novels of Michael Ondaatje and Wallace Stegner. With consummate skill he weaves the true 1804-06 journey with a deep psychological probe of his enigmatic characters' mind-sets. To his credit, he stays as close to the historical circumstances surrounding the expedition as can be hoped for in fiction. There is, in fact, a seamless narrative flow to "I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company," which earmarks this hybrid book as approaching the coveted status of classic American literature.

-- Douglas Brinkley

*The Life and Adventures of Lyle Clemens

A Novel

John Rechy

Grove Press: 324 pp., $24

John Rechy, rather like Henry Miller, is best known for his depiction of raw and shocking sexuality and yet best loved by some readers for his expression of a passion so sublime that it approaches a state of rapture. He began in 1963 with "City of Night," a book about the sordid life of a gay street hustler, but he also gave us, for example, "The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gomez," the tale of a poor middle-aged Mexican American woman who is redeemed when she's granted a marvelous vision.