The Shining Mountains - by Alix Christie

About the Book

"The Shining Mountains is a sweeping historical novel that depicts the fictional narrative of one family caught in the crossfire of westward colonial expansion. Based on the true story of Angus McDonald, the brother of the author's great-great-grandfather Duncan McDonald, Alix Christie has drawn on McDonald family records, published accounts of the Nez Perce war, treaties between the United States and Native American tribes, as well as 19th century newspaper accounts. The result is a story of pinpoint detail spread across a large canvas. In 1838, Angus McDonald arrives at Hudson's Bay, eager to make a name for himself with the Company . But the life that awaits him in North America is beyond his wildest imagination. And it is here that he meets Catherine Baptiste, kin to Nez Perce chiefs. She and Angus recognize each other as kindred spirits, and they, with their growing family, move west through the Montana and Oregon territories, only to find the life they are building together threatened by the forces of colonialism unleashed by the Company. The Shining Mountains is the family story of individuals caught on the wrong side of manifest destiny"--

Book Synopsis

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 Mountains brilliantly 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.

Review Quotes

"The Shining Mountains is a rousing historical novel that kept me up late, with woven story lines of fascinating characters moving across the Pacific Northwest seeking fortune and the thrill of survival and, of course, love. I especially loved the women, their bravery and clear-eyed vision of this world, from ancestral legends to the danger of the new."--Susan Straight, author of Mecca and Highwire Moon

"The Shining Mountains is an ambitious rendering of the conflicts between and among Indigenous Nations and European invaders in the final years of British American rivalry below the Medicine Line, centered in the diverse voices of a mixed-heritage family. Christie's book improves and expands on an important chapter of the West."--Theodore C. Van Alst Jr., author of Sacred Smokes and Sacred City

"The Shining Mountains takes its history seriously. Love, treachery, violence, and honour, it is all here in a novel to be savoured."--Sarah Dunant, author of In the Name of the Family

"A heartbreaking and horripilating tale of greed and betrayal. A monument to the hypocrisy of Manifest Destiny."--Dennis McCarthy, author of The Gospel According to Billy the Kid: A Novel

"Alix Christie has not only written a generous and spirited novel of the fur trade and the marriage of two worlds, she has written a rousing adventure tale steeped in research and oral histories. Humorous and deeply tender, I admire The Shining Mountains for its vivid and emotionally rendered characters, its magnificent landscape, and how Christie captures the extraordinary power of living story."--Debra Magpie Earling, author of Perma Red and The Lost Journals of Sacajewea

"An exceptional novel. . . . Intimate and expansive, tender and violent, The Shining Mountains is 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 Man on Fire