Alix will be reading from and discussing the fascinating history behind her new novel, The Shining Mountains. Books will be for sale and Alix will be available for signing after the presentation. 

About the book: 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. 

Published by High Road Books, an imprint of University of New Mexico Press, this epic family saga tells the real history of the American West--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.

About the Author: Alix Christie's debut novel, Gutenberg's Apprentice, was published by Harper Books in 2014. For the past thirty years she has reported for newspapers in California and from Europe as a foreign correspondent, including for the Washington Post, the Guardian of London, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Salon.com. She currently reviews books and arts for The Economist. She lives in San Francisco, California.