The Shining Mountains: A Novel [Paperback]

The year is 1838. A young Scotsman forced from his homeland arrives at Hudson’s Bay. Angus McDonald is contracted to British masters to trade for fur. But the world he discovers is beyond even a Highlander’s wildest imaginings: raging rivers, buffalo hunts, and the powerful daughter of an ancient and magnificent people. In Catherine Baptiste, kin to Nez Perce chiefs, Angus recognizes a kindred spirit. The Rocky Mountain West in which they meet will soon be torn apart by competing claims: between British fur traders, American settlers, and the Native peoples who have lived for millennia in the valleys and plateaus of the Shining Mountains’ western slopes.

In this epic family saga, the real history of the American West is revealed in all its terror, beauty, and complexity.The Shining Mountainsbrilliantly limns a world now long forgotten: of blended cultures seeking allies, trading furs for guns and steel, and a way of life in collision with westward colonial expansion.Alix Christieis the direct descendant of Angus McDonald’s brother Duncan. Her debut novel,Gutenberg’s Apprentice, was published by Harper Books in 2014. A longtime journalist and book reviewer, she has written for many publications including theWashington Post, theGuardianof London, theSan Francisco Chronicle, andThe Economist. She currently divides her time between San Francisco, California, and Berlin, Germany.
“The Shining Mountainstakes its history seriously. Love, treachery, violence, and honour, it is all here in a novel to be savoured.”—Sarah Dunant, author ofIn the Name of the Family“An exceptional novel. . . . Intimate and expansive, tender and violent,The Shining Mountainsis both a gripping family saga and a profound requiem for the lives lost and displaced by American westward expansion. This is storytelling at its finest.”—Zack Bean, author of