News Release

Author Review of The Shining Mountain

Date: May 13, 2023
Contact: Sarah Sherwood, 208-843-7014

LAPWAI, Idaho – The Nez Perce National Historical Park will host author Alix Christie, Saturday June 10, 2023 at 1:00 pm to share her book, The Shining Mountain.Alix Christie, author of Kirkus-, Publishers Weekly-, and Booklist-starred debut novel Gutenberg’s Apprentice, returns with The Shining Mountains, based on the true story of her Scottish forbearers.
The story begins in 1838, when a young Scotsman, Angus McDonald, lands at Hudson’s Bay. His journey takes him west to the unclaimed Oregon Country and a meeting with Catherine Baptiste, kin to Nez Perce chiefs. The world in which they fall in love and establish a family 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.
In this moving family epic, the history of the American West -- from the Rockies to the Pacific -- is revealed: a history of blended cultures seeking allies, trading furs for guns and steel, and the violence of American settlement.Christie’s research and empathetic touch deliver a brilliant tale.Alix Christie is the direct descendant of Angus McDonald’s brother Duncan.She consulted extensively with her Nez Perce and Salish-Pend d’Oreille cousins by marriage to research their blended family history, receiving official support for the project from the cultural committees of both tribes.
Winner of the 2021 Editor’s Prize in fiction from the Missouri Review, she published her debut novel, Gutenberg’s Apprentice, with Harper Books in 2014. For the past thirty years she has reported from abroad for newspapers including the San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian of London and Washington Post, and currently writes about culture for The Economist. She lives in San Francisco, California. Nez Perce National Historical Park’s Spalding Visitor Center is located 12 miles east of Lewiston at 39063 U.S. Highway 95. Park admission is free year round. For more information, please contact Nez Perce National Historical Park at 208-843-7001, or visit www.nps.gov/nepe or www.facebook.com/NezPerceNationalHistoricalParkwww.nps.gov About the National Park Service. More than 20,000 National Park Service employees care for America’s 424 national parks and work with communities across the nation to help preserve local history and create close-to-home recreational opportunities. Learn more at www.nps.gov, and on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.