• One Book Arizona selection, April 2005
• Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year
• Booklist Top Ten First Novel of the Year
• Bay Area Book Reviewers Award finalist in fiction
• Nominated for an IMPAC Literary Award

“Working with what facts there are to be found, Michaels tells the story of the first husband-and-wife team to attempt to raft down the Grand Canyon in 1928. In doing so, she creates a story that is at once a literary travelogue, an Indiana Jones adventure, a portrait of a marriage, and a sketch of a man. The result is a treasure. There is never a false note in this novel, never an inflated sentence, only voices perfectly pitched to character, descriptions resolutely true to place, and a sublime sense of pacing." —Booklist

"An absolutely gorgeous, spellbinding narrative; a golden key to a lost world."—Carolyn See

“Lisa Michaels answers the mystery of [the Hydes] disappearance in her own surprising and magnificent way…a brilliant success.” —Los Angeles Times

“Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm springs to mind…In Grand Ambition Michaels achieves that most difficult feat of depicting historical events as real and engaging, and does so with a spare eloquence that makes this book linger in the mind.” —The Times (London)

“Michaels debut novel swirls with mystery and optimism, love and unwavering trust—a grand read.” —Seattle Weekly

“Michaels has fastened on true events well worth appropriating. Because no one ever found the glory seeking couple's bodies, the story also offers ample latitude for invention…[T]he quality of Michaels' writing allows for frequent grace notes that such an exciting story would ordinarily crowd out.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“This material might have produced a story of psychological disintegration and betrayal in the wilderness, but Michaels has a more delicate subject in mind: the emotional distances in even the best marriages. Bessie feels ‘awe and bitterness' toward her confident, single-minded husband, and the combination of his hubris and her fear carries them to a surprisingly tender end.” —The New Yorker

“[A] masterful account…In Grand Ambition, Michaels breathes new life into a familiar theme by getting into the minds of extraordinary people.” —Denver Post