Elk River Books is excited to celebrate the 13th annual Independent Bookstore Day on Saturday, April 25, with in-store specials, refreshments, and book signings by authors Brenda Wahler and Samuel Western. The celebration lasts all day from 10 am to 5 pm, with the book signings happening from 2 to 5 pm.
Wahler is the author of Marcus Daly’s Montana Empires: Copper Mining, Racehorses, & Politics. A fourth-generation Montanan who lives near Helena, she is an attorney, author, independent historian and horsewoman. She has previously published Montana Horse Racing: A History and Marcus Daly’s Road to Montana for The History Press.
“Marcus Daly rose from poor Irish immigrant to Gilded Age magnate. From the mines of Butte, Montana, to America’s largest smelter in a town he also named Anaconda, Daly’s Anaconda Copper Company made a fortune. Meanwhile, his gregarious and generous façade hid a sly manipulator locked in battle with rival copper king W.A. Clark. With detailed research and more than one hundred photographs, Wahler peels back the layers of a complex industrialist, revealing his historic influence and legacy.”
Western has covered the northern Rocky Mountain region for the Economist for 25 years and also taught economic history at the University of Wyoming. He is the author of The Spirit of 1889: Restoring the Lost Promise of the High Plains and Northern Rockies, Pushed Off the Mountain, Sold Down the River: Wyoming’s Search for Its Soul and other books. A two-time recipient of the Wyoming Literary Fellowship for fiction, he was also a finalist for the High Plains Books Award for poetry. He lives in Sheridan, Wyoming.
Western’s new book is the novel, Katana, of which the publisher notes: “When a retired officer returns to Japan to atone for a theft born of love and revenge, he must finally confront the ghosts of war, loss, and his own past.”
