Mountaineers Books
Mountaineers Books is thrilled to announce that two of our recent titles are finalists for the 2017 Washington State Book Award — My Old Man and the Mountain: A Memoir by Leif Whittaker and Turning Homeward: Restoring Hope and Nature in the Urban Wild by Adrienne Ross Scanlan. Each of these are debut books by the authors.
Washington State Book Awards are given for outstanding books published by Washington authors the previous year. The winners will be announced at the 2017 Washington State Book Awards celebration on Saturday, October 14, at 7pm at the Central Library in downtown Seattle. This event is free and open to all. We hope you'll join us.
"We are absolutely delighted that the excellent work of our talented authors has been recognized in this way," says Helen Cherullo, publisher of Mountaineers Books. “Our mission, as an independent nonprofit publisher based in Washington State, is to connect readers to the lessons and pleasures of the great outdoors. We are immensely proud to share these tremendous, outdoor-oriented works by local writers nationally.”
Leif Whittaker’s debut narrative, My Old Man and the Mountain: A Memoir, is Leif’s engaging and humorous story of what it was like to "grow up Whittaker". The youngest son of Jim Whittaker and Dianne Roberts, in an extended family of accomplished climbers, he shares glimpses of his upbringing and how the pressure to climb started early on. Readers learn of his first adventures with family in the Olympic Mountains and on Mount Rainier, his close yet at times competitive relationship with his brother Joss, his battle with a serious back injury, and his efforts to stand apart from his father's legacy.
The book was published in September 2016, and won the Nautilus Book Awards 2016 Silver Winner, and a PUB WEST award for jacket design (hardcover, $24.95 before member discount).
Turning Homeward tells the story of how Adrienne—as a newcomer to Western Washington—immersed herself in nature restoration as a way to understand the land she’d moved to, to make it her home through volunteerism, and to work past the grief of her father’s recent death. What she learned on her journey is that nature can be found even in places we don’t expect to find it, and that in striving to restore it, we can heal ourselves, as well.
Turning Homeward: Restoring Hope and Nature in the Urban Wild was also selected as a "Notable Book" by the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Awards (SONWA) 2016 and won the Nautilus Book Awards 2016 Silver Winner earlier this year. It was released in September 2016 (hardcover, $17.95 before member discount).
We're ecstatic with the recognition of these two narratives, and look forward to the awards celebration on October 14!
