In his new nonfiction, Jefferson's Spy: The Secret Life of Meriwether Lewis, Tony L. Turnbow explores Lewis's relationship with his mentor, Thomas Jefferson, and the secret work he performed on Jefferson's behalf until his mysterious death at the age of thirty-five.

Meriwether Lewis, co-leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, was one of the few men Jefferson chose to perform spy work or "secret services" as it was called at the time. Lewis, who lost his own father at age five, looked to his neighbor Jefferson as a father figure. Jefferson propelled Lewis's rise from a Charlottesville, Virginia farm, to a residence in the East Room of the White House, and then to a 3,500-mile intelligence-gathering expedition into the unknown across the Rockies to the Pacific. Lewis and his co-captain, William Clark, returned to become two of the first American popular heroes.

But Jefferson's next mission for Lewis would prove a challenge he would not overcome. The work to take Spanish-controlled Texas and Santa Fe entangled Lewis in shadowy networks of spies, assassins, and assorted villains along the enemy border. Lewis died carrying sensitive information to Washington on a road so dangerous it was known as "The Devil's Backbone." Though it was claimed Lewis shot himself two or three times, cut his own throat, and slit his wrists to the bone, Jefferson was informed-and apparently accepted-that Lewis killed himself. Three decades later, a state commission concluded that it was more likely Lewis died at the hands of an assassin.

On America's 250, this first volume of a two-volume series will offer new information to reexamine one of the nation's most enduring mysteries and provide a new perspective on two of its heroes.