1999 - Gary Kinder
Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea

Fascinating, well-researched story of the SS Central America, a 300-foot side-wheel steamer that sank in heavy seas in September of 1857 off the Carolina coast carrying 21 tons of gold. It's still hailed as the worst peacetime sea disaster in American history Kindler vividly reconstructs the harrowing details of the disaster from the eyes of passengers and crew Then he tells the even more stirring story of how, after 130 years in 8,000 feet of water, the SS CentralAmerica was salvaged. Tommy Thompson of the Columbus-America Discovery Group found her and recovered gold coins, bars, nuggets, along with steamer trunks filled with historic clothes, newspapers, books and journals sealed under water for 130 years

1998 - Peter Bacho
Dark Blue Suit and other stories

Set in Seattle from the 1950s to the present, Dark Blue Suit depicts the lives of two groups: Filipino immigrant pioneers, the Manong generation who arrived on the Pacific Coast during the 1920s and 1930s, and their American-born children. Although narrated as fiction, the stories - their landmarks, activities, settings, and events - are grounded in historical fact. The book builds to a quiet power that is essentially elegiac; an era closes, but the voices of the older generation are shouldered by the younger, to keep the history, to retell the stories, and to pay homage

1997 - Jonathan Raban
Bad Land: An American Romance

In Bad Land, Jonathan Raban journeys beyond the myth of the American West to reveal the harsh and desperate realities of the homesteaders' lives, offering an incisive portrait of the American heartland that redefines the essence of the American dream

Seduced by the government's offer of 320 acres per homesteader, Americans and Europeans rushed to Montana and the Dakotas to fulfill their own American dream in the first decade of this century. Raban's stunning evocation of the harrowing, desperate reality behind the homesteader's dream strips away the myth--while preserving the romance--that has shrouded our understanding of our own heartland.

1996 - Sherman Alexie
Reservation Blues

Alexie mixes biting black humor, a healthy dose of magic, and sparkling lyricism to produce a remarkably powerful story with roots not only in Native American mythology, but also in the equally potent history of rock 'n' roll. Alexie's characters, including lead singer Thomas Builds-the-Fire, lead guitarist Victor Joseph, and backup vocalists Chess and Checkers Warm Water, are reservation Indians, but they are also kids with guitars committed to putting on their own show. Alexie writes about Indians who are individuals first and members of an ethnic group second. The stuff of their lives, the pain, the poverty, the humor, the resilience, grows out of their experience on the reservation, and fuels their need to be heard in their own voices:

Alexie portrays a complex society and more-complex individuals with deceptively simple language and straightforward descriptions of actions and dialog. His characters live through intensely difficult times; they know so little of success and so much about tragedy and discouragement. Yet the story is shot through with hope and humor

1995 - Jack Nisbet
Sources of the River: Tracking David Thompson Across Western North America

In this true story of adventure, Jack Nisbet re-creates the life and times of David Thompson--surveyor, mapmaker, and fur trader. As Nisbet tracks the explorer's trail across the modern landscape, he interweaves his own observations with Thompson's historical writings, creating a lively, finely paced narrative