Author Talk with Alix Christie
June 29th from 5-7pm
InterOcean Studio
2905 S. Elati Street, Englewood CO 80110
The Shining Mountains, based on the true story of her Scottish forbears. 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 empathic 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.