Portland writer Colin Sargent's debut novel, "Museum of Human Beings," was published last year, but has just been put out in paperback. The book is a fictionalized account of a very real historical figure, through which Sargent explores the themes of loss and redemption and the search for personal identity.

"Museum of Human Beings" is based on the life of Jean Baptiste Charbonneau -- a real person -- but is, by no means, an historical account. What is historically accurate is that Charbonneau was actually the son of a white French fur trapper and the Shoshoni woman known as Sacagawea.

It's also true that the young Baptiste was taken under the wing of explorer William Clark. And while Sargent's story is technically fiction, the author says it tries to take the reader to a place that conventional histories simply can't. As the book opens, the infant Charbonneau, or "Pomp" as he would later be nicknamed, encounters the Lewis and Clark expedition on Christmas Eve in 1805.

"Museum of Human Beings" is published by McBooks Press.