Publisher's Synopsis
A sweeping multigenerational American epic that weaves together historical mystery, mythic storytelling, and urgent contemporary questions about who gets to tell our stories.
In 1867, Irish Civil War veteran Eoinn Seeley leads six fellow immigrants through the American West searching for a place to establish a home for their families. Along the way they rescue an orphaned girl, Sam King, and together establish Crystal Village in Idaho's Bitterroot Mountains-a utopian mining community that becomes one of the most progressive settlements in the American West. With cutting-edge technology, radical social vision, and love stories that defy convention, the village prospers for decades through infamous gold rushes, forging complex relationships with neighboring Indigenous communities. Then the Great Fire of 1910 destroys it.
But what really happened to Crystal Village? And why do some families still carry its secrets?
Over a century later, Jack Seeley returns to Idaho to visit his aging grandmother and discovers fragments of a mystery that will change everything he thought he knew about his family's past. Working alongside childhood friend, Susanne O'Connor, Jack begins to uncover the truth about Crystal Village-a truth that involves not just hidden history, but the mythic forces that have shaped the American West since time immemorial.
Meticulously researched and featuring actual historical figures from the mining boom era, Legacy of the Bitterroots spans from the Civil War to the digital age, exploring themes of cultural collaboration, intergenerational trauma, and the transformative power of authentic storytelling.
"For readers of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, The Golem and the Jinni, and Homegoing-a genre-defying novel that asks what happens when history refuses to stay buried."
