Cryptid, by Eric Penz. Pages 1 - 50.

So far, there are three sections of this story. In one section, President Jefferson, in 1809, decides to keep secret a discovery made by the famous explorers Lewis and Clark as they traveled to the Pacific from Washington DC. In the next section, a scientist, Samantha, is in China, looking for fossils of Gigantopithecus, an extinct apeman (more ape than man, though!). In the last section, a man finds fresh bones of Gigantopithecus in Washington state, even though everyone thought it had become extinct 125,000 years ago. The government is trying to keep him from telling the secret, and so they are chasing him. He decides to send the bones to Samantha, and warns her that she may be in trouble soon, too.

I got this book because I have seen the author at several science fiction conventions, and because I am interested in paleontology (ancient animals) and cryptozoology (the search for animals that may not be real, such as the Loch Ness monster). I can guess that this book will be about the discovery of the Sasquatch, or Bigfoot, a legendary, huge, manlike ape that some people believe lives in the forests of California, Oregon, Washington, and Canada. That should be fun. However, I don't know if I will like the part about the government conspiracy. I think consipiracies are hard to maintain, because someone will probably talk too much. Oh, well -- it might be fun, if the writer does it well.

Tim