Beginning in the 17th-century, the book uses five families to track how Native people used intermarriage with Europeans, linking their own communities and extending the fur trade. These families built cosmopolitan trading centers and staffed the Rocky Mountain fur trade. After two centuries of surviving imperial battles over the fur trade, imported diseases, and the violence of Indian Removal, these mixed-descent families faced down the racial politics of Post-Civil War America. Some survived, but many didn't in an indelible Western history with a new human face.

About the Author: Anne Hyde is one of our foremost historians of the American West. Born in St. Louis, raised in Reno, Nevada, she spent two decades teaching at Colorado College and now is Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma. She is author of four books, including Empires, Nations, and Families (Ecco, 2012) that won the Bancroft Prize and was Pulitzer finalist.