"Amid an alarming rise in xenophobia, Ana Maria Spagna stumbled upon a story: one day in 1875, on a high bluff over the Columbia River, a group of local Indigenous people murdered a large number of Chinese Miners and pushed their bodies off a cliff into the river. The incident was dubbed the Chelan Falls Massacre. Despite having lived in the area for decades, Spagna had never before heard of this event. In Pushed, she sets out to discover what really...

Beginning in Wenatchee, North Central Washington and ending near Enderby in lower British Columbia, the author retells traditional stories of places and events in Okanogan country.

Wenatchee, named after the native people who inhabited the valley in the eastern Cascades for centuries, is situated at the confluence of the Wenatchee and Columbia Rivers in central Washington.

"For many years, Ana Maria Spagna has stayed put, mostly, in a small mountain valley at the head of a glacier-carved lake. You're so lucky to live there, people say. She is lucky. But she is also restless. In Uplake she takes road trips, flies to distant cities, fantasizes about other people's lives, and then returns home again to muse on rootedness, yearning, commitment, ambition, wonder, and love. These engaging, reflective essays celebrate the...

How did a quintessential California girl end up earning her living in the Pacific Northwest with a crosscut saw? In "Now Go Home, Spagna reflects on the journey that took her from a childhood in the suburbs of LA to a trail crew in Washington's North Cascades, where she falls in love with a place and, unexpectedly, with a woman.

In images and narratives, Native River recreates the untamed Mid-Columbia--the river as it once was, before the building of seven major dams. Featuring a wealth of illustrations, maps, and photographs, many never before published, this finely crafted book focuses on the 350-mile reach of the middle Columbia River from Priest Rapids in south-central Washington to the U.S. Canadian border. William Layman affords each segment of this waterway with its...