LEWISTON – Author Colin Sargent will read excerpts from his acclaimed new historical novel, “Museum of Human Beings,” at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 25, in Callahan Hall at the Lewiston Public Library.

The book is about the life of Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, the son of the fabled Native American woman Sacagawea who served as guide and interpreter for Lewis and Clark’s cross-county trek to the Pacific in the early 1800s. Only 16 when she led the expedition, Sacagawea caught the eye of William Clark who then took her and her child into his home, and, after her death, raised Baptiste as a foster son.

When the teenage Baptiste attracts the notice of a visiting duke, Clark agrees to let the man take the boy to Europe ostensibly to be educated at court. Instead, the gleeful opportunist exhibits Baptiste throughout Europe as a “half gentleman-half animal.” Eventually Jean Baptiste turns his back on the Old World and returns to the New, determined to find his true place there. He travels deep into the heart of the American wilderness, and into the depths of his mother’s soul on an epic quest for identity that brings sacrifice, loss and the distant promise of redemption.

“Museum of Human Beings” is the debut novel for writer Colin Sargent, who lives in Portland and is founding editor and publisher of award-winning Portland Magazine, as well as a board member of the literacy organization Maine Reads. A graduate of the United States Naval Academy, Sargent earned a Stonecoast MFA in creative writing, he is a playwright and author of three books of poetry and has been awarded the Maine individual artist fellowship in literature. His screenplay “Montebello Ice” is under option by Gideon Films.

A question and answer session will follow Sargent’s reading at the Lewiston Public Library, and copies of his book will be available for purchase and signing. There is no charge for admission to the event. More information is available by calling the Lewiston Public Library at 513-3135.