At his grandfather's urging, a boy sets out in search of the secret of life and learns more than he realizes.

2023 Caroline Bancroft History Prize from the Denver Public Library 2023 WHA W. Turrentine Jackson Award From the earliest days of non-Native settlement of Montana, when Chinese immigrants made up more than 10 percent of the territory's population, Chinese pioneers played a key role in the region's development. But this population, so crucial to Montana's history, remains underrepresented in historical accounts, and popular attention to the Chinese in Montana tends to focus on sensational elements--exoticizing Chinese Montanans and distancing their lived experiences from our modern understanding. The Middle Kingdom under the Big Sky seeks to recover the stories of Montana's Chinese population in their own words and deepen understanding of Chinese experiences in Montana by using a global lens. Mark T. Johnson has mined several large collections of primary documents left by Chinese pioneers, translated into English here for the first time. These collections, spanning the 1880s through the 1950s, provide insight into the pressures the Chinese community faced--from family members back in China and from non-Chinese Montanans--as economic and cultural disturbances complicated acceptance of Chinese residents in the state. Through their own voices Johnson reveals the agency of Chinese Montanans in the history of the American West and China.

When Jack Horner was in high school, he put together a science project that identified and compared dinosaur fossils from Montana and Alberta. Now a world-renowned dinosaur paleontologist, Dr. Horner realizes that many of his identifications in that proje

Publisher Description

"The first in a ... trilogy"--Page 4 of cover.

The Life of the Afterlife in the Big Sky State is a groundbreaking history of death in Montana. It offers a unique, reflective, and sensitive perspective on the evolution of customs and burial grounds. Beginning with Montana’s first known burial site, Ellen Baumler considers the archaeological records of early interments in rock ledges, under cairns, in trees, and on open-air scaffolds. Contact with Europeans at trading posts and missions brought new burial practices. Later, crude “boot hills” and pioneer graveyards evolved into orderly cemeteries. Planned cemeteries became the hallmark of civilization and the measure of an educated community. Baumler explores this history, yet untold about Montana. She traces the pathway from primitive beginnings to park-like, architecturally planned burial grounds where people could recreate, educate their children, and honor the dead. The Life of the Afterlife in the Big Sky State is not a comprehensive listing of the many hundreds of cemeteries across Montana. Rather it discusses cultural identity evidenced through burial practices, changing methods of interments and why those came about, and the evolution of cemeteries as the “last great necessity” in organized communities. Through examples and anecdotes, the book examines how we remember those who have passed on.

Haiku and occasional essays from an eccentric personality.

No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Linda Lael Miller welcomes you to Parable, Montana - where sparks fly between a handsome rodeo rancher and country-western superstar! With his father's rodeo legacy to continue and a prosperous spread to run, Walker Parrish has no time to dwell on wrecked relationships. But country and western sweetheart Casey Elder is out of the spotlight and back in Parable, Montana. And Walker can't ignore that his 'act now, think later' passion for Casey has had consequences...two teenage consequences! Keeping her children's paternity under wraps has always been part of Casey's plan to give them normal, uncomplicated lives. Now the best way to hold her family together seems to be to let Walker be a part of it – as her husband of convenience. But will some secrets – like Casey's desire to be the rancher's wife in every way – unravel with unforeseen results?

An exhilarating new series set in the great outdoors, from HOTEL FLAMINGO author Alex Milway Welcome to Big Sky Mountain: a home for everyone! Rosa has come from the city to live with Grandma Nan in the wilds of Big Sky Mountain. And what surprises are in store for her! Grandma Nan is not exactly an ordinary grandma, and Big Sky Mountain is like nowhere Rosa has dreamed about before. Grandma Nan lives in an old wooden cabin with Albert the moose and Little Pig the pygmy owl, and spends every day out on adventures. From canoeing down rapids to making friends with the local animals, life never stays still for long on Big Sky Mountain! Rosa has a lot to learn, and when unexpected visitors to the mountain cause a bit of a ruckus, can she rise to the challenge, and be the mountain girl Grandma Nan needs her to be?

Somewhere on the edge of a long-forgotten land called the Great Open, two fiercely strong-willed, all-American high school boys come togetherforging a relationship hotter than the blazing Eastern Montana summer sun. Cash McCollum, a short-tempered, fifth generation rodeo cowboy, finds his simple, black-n-white world bulldozed over by rich, handsome Travis Hunter, star jock of the football team. And what begins as a secret liaison between them, eventually stirs up into an impish, and sometimes humorous, whirlwind of gossipawakening the small, sleepy town of Miles City. you n Travis seem to be slidin into a real comfy corner. A corner that Cashs older brother, Clayton is not okay with. As time passes, and the friendship deepens, its their extreme popularity that continues to attract a whole lot of unwanted attentionthrusting them from the closet into the middle of local limelight. From the beginning, the stakes are high with each risking a lot. Cash cannot lose sight of the rodeo crown title, All-Around Cowboy, at his fingertips; and Travis is dead-set on taking the football team to state championshipgaining the trophy of Most Valuable Player for himself as well. Compounding this star-studded drama, these two boys also discover their worlds are COMPLETELY differentwith nothing to bind them together but an unbridled attraction and a fierce determination to make the relationship work. Were comin from two different culturescant you see that? Cash forces Travis to smell the roses. You obviously come from money I dont. I never will. Its Travis persistence, however, that keeps them glued together. I cant live without you, Cash, because its you who makes me a better guy Under the Big Sky unveils a world that many overlook, or refuse to acknowledge. It is where the human heart beats as strong as ancient echoes of Indian drums along a mighty and untamed Yellowstone River. Within its pages, youll be taken to places never seen beforebut yet, seem so familiar. Youll be allowed to see the human soulnaked in all its brashness, yet pure and simplegraced with the innocence of honest youth. Under the Big Sky is a story that undeniably declares that, What Heaven hath joined together let no man cut asunder.