Lay the Mountains Low: The Flight of the Nez Perce from Idaho and the Battle of the Big Hole—August 9–10, 1877

America's bestselling frontier writer combines his unique skills as both an acknowledged historian and a consummate storyteller, blending historical fact with powerful human emotions to vividly recreate the past for his millions of readers. In his most ambitious novel to date, Terry C. Johnston combines all the drama and gut-wrenching tragedy to tell the story of the Nez Perce War as a whole cloth, a complex tapestry of deeply wrought emotions and bitter betrayal. Johnston breathes life into little-known characters from this terrifying conflict that will leap out of the past with compelling urgency-page after page, everyone you will meet were real people at the most crucial point of their lives. This is a story of individuals, knitted together in a compelling mosaic of emotions that will sweep you up and carry you along at a gallop.

Despite one bloody skirmish after another, the Non-Treaty bands of Nez Perce still believe they can leave all the turmoil and killing behind in Idaho, fleeing General O.O. Howard's army across the Lolo Trail into Montana Territory. Looking Glass and the fighting chiefs lead their people to the "Place of the Ground Squirrels"-there to rest a few days while the women cut new lodgepoles, the children play for the first time in many weeks, and everyone celebrates leaving the war behind, rejoicing that they are on their way to the buffalo country.

But there in the Big Hole of southwestern Montana, a chill, misty dawn covered the advance of Colonel John Gibbon's Seventh U.S. Infantry as they stole down upon the sleeping, unsuspecting village...unleashing the bloodiest onslaught of the Nez Perce War!

© 2025 St. Martin's Press (Ebook): 9780312274429

Release date

Ebook: 14 March 2025