Long Beach – Author and artist John Merrill Gibson will sign copies of his new book, “Growing Up on the Lewis & Clark Trail,” at Sandpiper Books Saturday, Aug. 16. His new book is a rhapsodic tour of the Lower Columbia, from Cathlamet to Long Beach, and includes Gibson’s recollections of the area’s historic and colorful past.

Gibson, 73, who began painting later in life, considers his earlier years and education as the foundation for his art. “Music gave me the harmony for color relationship; rhyme and verse gave me the rhythms of recurring shapes and spaces; the sciences let me see into the forces that work above and below the earth’s crust, just as a figure painter must study the muscle and bone structure of his subject … “

Growing Up on the Lewis & Clark Trail, bursting in color and drenched in tightly packed prose, is a hymn in words and pictures to the area Gibson loves intensely, according to Sandpiper.

Saturday’s autograph party from noon until 3 p.m. at Sandpiper Books, 110 S. Pacific, Long Beach, is a free literary event, open to the public. Refreshments will be served.