RELEASE DATE OF MAY 19, 2015

Contact Haley Stocking, Publicist 206/826-4318 hstocking@sasquatchbooks.com

Ancient Places
People and Landscape in the Emerging Northwest
Jack Nisbet

"I can think of no better guide to this corner of the West than the lyrical naturalist
Jack Nisbet, whose latest, Ancient Places, is a fascinating read."
Jess Walter, author of We Live in Water



Jack Nisbet weaves a story like no one else can in Ancient Places:
People and Landscape in the Emerging Northwest (Sasquatch
Books; $21.95; May 2015). Author of celebrated books including
The Collector, Nisbet engages some of the touchstones in
Northwest history in this assemblage of nonfiction stories that
reveal the symbiotic relationship of people and place in the Pacific
Northwest. From rural Oregon, where a controversy brewed over
the provenance and ownership of a meteorite, to the great floods
15,000 years ago that shaped what is now Washington, Oregon,
and Idaho, this is a compelling collection of stories about natural
and human history. Although the scale of time and space in some
of the pieces is immense, individual characters still manage to

leave their marks; even though the force of modern civilization sometimes seems overwhelming,
small places and their key components somehow persevere.

Drawing on a range of fresh personal research, both oral and written, Nisbets prose is alive

and vibrant in Ancient Places, demonstrating why he has become a prominent voice for bringing the
natural history of the Pacific Northwest to life.

(MORE)
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About the Author

PNBA Book Award winner and best-selling author Jack Nisbet is
a historian, teacher, and author who focuses on the intersection of
human history and natural history in the Pacific Northwest. He is
the author of the highly regarded Sources of the River, for which
he was awarded the Murray Morgan Prize by the Washington
State Historical Society; The Collector; David Douglas, a
Naturalist at Work; and Visible Bones. Visit JackNisbet.com.

Also by Jack Nisbet

Visible Bones
978-1-57061-953-3

Sources of the River

978-1-57061-817-8

The Collector
978-1-57061-725-6

David Douglas,
A Naturalist at Work
978-1-57061-830-7

Ancient Places
People and Landscape in the Emerging Northwest
Jack Nisbet
May 2015 $21.95 256 pages Hardcover
ISBN 978-1-57061-980-9
Available wherever fine books are sold.
Sasquatch Books 800/775-0817 www.sasquatchbooks.com

SASQUATCH BOOKS

1904 3rd Avenue, Suite 710 SEATTLE, WASHINGTON 98101

206/467-4300 TOLL FREE 800/775-0817 FAX 206/467-4301
www.sasquatchbooks.com

Praise for Jack Nisbet

Ancient Places: People and Landscape in the Emerging Northwest
I can think of no better guide to this corner of the West than the lyrical
naturalist Jack Nisbet, whose latest, Ancient Places, is a fascinating read.
Jess Walter, author of We Live in Water
Master historian Nisbet has communed with Indians, astronauts, miners, and
scientists to reveal a wonderfully personal, engaging, and authoritative picture
of the cultural and natural history of the Inland Northwest. Ancient Places
takes the reader from the earliest geological events that defined the region to
the human and environmental forces at work today.
John Marzluff, author of Welcome to Subirdia and Gifts of the Crow

The Collector: David Douglas and the Natural History

of the Northwest
Nisbets well-researched narrative has considerable bounce and drama . . . Its
a portrait of a true adventurer . . . a solid piece of scholarship and synthesis.
Kirkus Reviews
An exhilaratingbiography that provides an entertaining portrait of the
unfettered determination that drove one of the giantsin the field of botanical
exploration and infused the young nation he viewed with a keen and
zealous spirit.
Booklist

David Douglas, a Naturalist at Work

This new volume will delight anyone with an interest in wild Northwest
history and the naturalists adventure.
Lyanda Lynn Haupt, author of Crow Planet
Those who love the intersection of human history and natural history are in
for a treat.
BC Studies

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1904 3rd Avenue, Suite 710 SEATTLE, WASHINGTON 98101

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Ancient Places Events

May 19th, 7:00 pm
Launch party, Q&A, reading, and signing at Aunties Bookstore, Spokane, WA
May 21st, 7:00 pm
Presentation at Moses Lake Art Center, Moses Lake, WA
May 28th, 5:30 pm
Presentation at Museum of Culture and Environment, Ellensburg, WA
June 3rd, 7:00 pm
Reading at Book People of Moscow, ID
June 9th, 7:00 pm
Presentation at Seattle Public Library (Central Library), Seattle, WA
June 10th, 7:00 pm
Presentation at Village Books, Bellingham, WA
June 11th, 7:00 pm
Presentation at State Capital Museum, Olympia, WA
June 13th, 6:30 pm
Presentation at Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park, WA
June 24th, 6:30 pm
Presentation at Missoula Public Library, Missoula, MT
Events subject to change, please contact hstocking@sasquatchbooks.com for up-to-date
information and see JackNisbet.com for the authors ongoing talks.

SASQUATCH BOOKS

1904 3rd Avenue, Suite 710 SEATTLE, WASHINGTON 98101

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AMERICA'S BEST READ URBAN WEEKLY | LEARN MORE

Culture & Food Arts & Culture

May 13, 2015

KICKING ROCKS
Jack Nisbet's latest book, Ancient Places, tells surprising stories of the Inland
Northwest
By Ted S. McGregor Jr.

Jack Nisbet: "I guess I've always been looking for different ways to reveal the landscape."

Young Kwak

pokane writer Jack Nisbet sees the little things the things all around us that most
of us don't take the time to consider. Ants, for example there's an entire chapter in his
new book, Ancient Places, about the mysterious genius of ants.
"There's so much to explore right here," Nisbet says of his policy of keeping his subject
matter all within a day's drive of his South Hill home.
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Or magpies just the mention of the misunderstood bird launches a spirited discussion
about why they're so hated, almost like wolves. But no, that's not in this book he's not
quite done with that subject yet. Maybe it'll make his next book.
How about that icon of all things Inland Northwesty, the ubiquitous ponderosa pine? Well,
did you know, as he writes in Ancient Places, that "the thick outer bark that glows like a
ruddy sunburn... supposedly marks the passing of the trees' first century"? I love the fact
that somebody knows this stuff. When I bring it up, he adds that he and a friend bore-tested
a particularly ruddy specimen along the High Drive bluff. Age: 350 years.
As Aristotle, the original student of nature, put it, "In all things of nature, there is
something of the marvelous." Through Nisbet's eyes, there's wonder all around us.
The name of Nisbet's book, Ancient Places, is taken from the obtuse, religious Francis
Thompson poem, The Kingdom of God: "Angels keep their ancient places / Turn but a stone,
and start a wing!"
Wow, that's deep maybe too deep for me to follow. So I ask Nisbet what the line means to
him.
"When I kick rocks," he says with a chuckle, "stuff comes out."
In his chapter about Wes Wehr, the eccentric founder of the Stonerose Interpretive Center in
Republic, Nisbet writes that Wehr "followed the European Enlightenment tradition... that
any understanding of the larger world required not only close examination of its smallest
motes, but also a steady awareness of their place in time."
In that line, it's as if Nisbet has written the job description for the career he has carved out
for himself: Kicking rocks and studying whatever motes float up into view.

etting here was no straight path. Nisbet was born along the line that splits North and
South Carolina, around the Catawba River. Two of his aunts were writers; he was given
an old fruit box filled with the work of one after she died kind of Dorothea Lange-esque,
Depression-era vignettes of life in the rural South. His mom was a chemist and loved bugs.
But she died while he was in high school, and he was looking to move away even in his teens.
"I grew up in a racist world," Nisbet says matter-of-factly. "It was ugly. I wanted to get away
from it."
Acceptance to Stanford University was his ticket, and learning from the great Wallace
Stegner added the inspiration Nisbet especially identified with Stegner's memoir, Wolf
Willow. He graduated with an English degree in 1971 and wound up in northeastern
Washington, where a classmate's dad had some murky mining claims. Soon Nisbet was
working construction, driving tractors and starting to take notice of the mountains, the
streams and the people.

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Young Kwak

Jack Nisbet at People's Park; his subjects are generally within a day's drive of Spokane: "There's so much to explore
right here."

He became a columnist for the newspaper in Chewelah a 10-year run that created the raw
material for his book Purple Flat Top. "In fact," Nisbet says, "I view Purple Flat Top, Visible
Bones and Ancient Places as a kind of trilogy."
His big break came in 1994, when he finally sold after 10 rejections Sources of the
River, one of the best books about the Great Northwest. Telling the tale of fur trapper David
Thompson, whose fingerprints are all over our region, Nisbet worked on the book for nearly
a decade. Since '94, he and his wife Claire have lived in Spokane, where they raised two kids.
Today, Nisbet works on his stories, teaches kids all over the Inland Northwest about local
history and publishes new books at a steady clip.

've had the pleasure of working with Jack for many years now; we've published his
work here in the Inlander from time to time, and it's always been fun kicking rocks with
him. I feel like Ancient Places is a great introduction to the way his mind works it jumps
around a little bit but stays true to those big themes of his.
Nature is central in each of the 10 chapters, for sure, but it's the people he profiles who add
depth and color to the big picture. There's Byron Riblet, who helped solve the problem of
getting remote stashes of dolomite to the World War I effort by creating a massive gondola
to carry the ore to a railhead. His Riblet Mansion is now the Arbor Crest Winery; his
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company also installed the first ski lifts in the region.

The tension between the original owners of these lands and the settlers who came after is
another of Nisbet's big themes, and here we meet hero/scoundrel William Manning, who, in
controversial fashion, collected many artifacts owned by local tribes a haul that today
makes up the bulk of the MAC collection. After the two cultures clashed during what Nisbet
calls that "period of flux," the fallout has been, well, complicated.
"'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces," the Thompson poem continues, "that miss the manysplendored thing."
Nisbet wants us to look so we don't miss those many-splendored things to see, as he
shows in Chapter One, a wonder like the Northern Lights. Aristotle nailed it: All those tiny
motes do add up to something truly marvelous.
Jack Nisbet reads from Ancient Places Tue, May 19, at 7 pm Auntie's 402 W. Main
auntiesbooks.com 838-0206

BOOK EXCERPT

TERRA-COTTA MAN
BY JACK NISBET

Outsider artist Leno Prestini emigrated to the United States with his family from Besano,
Italy, in the early part of the 20th century. His father worked as a terra-cotta finisher for the
Washington Brick, Lime and Sewer Pipe Company in Clayton, just north of Spokane. After
the elder Prestini passed away, young Leno dropped out of school and joined his brother
Batista at the brickyard.
It was during the 1930s that Leno Prestini emerged as a unique figure in local lore, proving
himself time and again to be a gifted design artist crossed with a clever engineer, a broad
conversationalist and a mad adventurer. He seemed to breathe in the essence of
northeastern Washington including the Clayton brick plant and its machine shop; the
region's sawmill and mining culture; its mountains, coniferous forests and glacier-carved
lakes; tribal culture and extended trail-horse rides; the taverns, churches and country music
and spit them back out in ways that were entirely personal.
When Leno decided he wanted to go boating on nearby Loon Lake, he fashioned a craft with
cement-sack sails and an iron rudder oriented like the tail of an airplane. The keel was a
coffin cover held in place with a length of company strap iron, and the thin steel would
begin to hum as the boat picked up speed.
After seeing a round diving helmet made by a Spokane machinist, Leno and his friend
Burton Stewart used an acetylene torch to shape their own helmet out of a hot water heater,

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decorated it with a sculpted octopus and installed double glass to prevent the faceplate from
fogging. Adapting a garden hose for an air supply line, they put their odd headdress to work,
diving after lost property for the summer lake crowd. Soon the dive team started descending
beyond available sunlight, so they cobbled up an underwater flashlight from a six-cell
battery enclosed in an aluminum cylinder, with a fuse head to hold the glass and a Model T
radiator cap to seal the end. As their dives in Loon Lake approached 90 feet, they ordered
balloon cloth from the Goodyear company to sew into a suit that could handle the cold
temperatures.
Stewart and Prestini's eccentric operations were just getting warmed up. They salvaged a
stainless-steel cream can and fabricated an improved helmet. A beer-barrel pressure pump
regulated the air supply flowing through their garden hose. One dockside photograph shows
Burton and another pal, in dark shirts, bending over the compressor in the background while
Leno, fully tricked out in the white Goodyear diving suit, weighted yoke and leaden shoes,
stares at the camera like Captain Nemo himself. They thought enough of their efforts to
exhibit the suit at the Spokane Interstate Fair that fall and to answer a call from the Colville
Police Department to help locate the body of a drowned man in a lake north of town.
Leno and Burton Stewart climbed mountain peaks all around the region. When the terracotta plant shut down for a brief period, they customized a 10-foot ladder and used it to
scale the kiln's 110-foot brick smokestack, taking panoramic photographs from the top to
prove it.
And at every opportunity, Leno added his own strange creations to the terra-cotta kiln. He
molded a diver dodging dangerous sharks, and an elf lamp that carried an unsettlingly dark
aura. A two-headed mountain climber seemed to teeter toward an abyss, and when his
brother Batista asked him about the double heads, Leno replied, "Every time I get to the top
of the mountain, my problems are still with me."
Reprinted by permission from Ancient Places: People and Landscape in the Emerging
Northwest by Jack Nisbet. Published by Sasquatch Books.

RELATED EVENTS
JACK NISBET BOOK LAUNCH @ Auntie's Bookstore

Tue., May 19, 7 p.m. Free

Tags: Arts & Culture

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1904 3rd Avenue, Suite 710 SEATTLE, WASHINGTON 98101

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SASQUATCH BOOKS

1904 3rd Avenue, Suite 710 SEATTLE, WASHINGTON 98101

206/467-4300 TOLL FREE 800/775-0817 FAX 206/467-4301
www.sasquatchbooks.com