PULLMAN, Wash.— Basalt Books’ newest title, Celebrating Palouse Country: A History of the Landscape in Text and Images by Palouse locals Richard D. Scheuerman and John Clement, transports readers through time among the Palouse Country’s beauty and expanse, starting with its First Peoples and chronicling the history of the Palouse region’s inhabitants across centuries. Enhanced with spectacular images from award-winning photographer John Clement, this volume continues an enduring collaboration and substantially updates a popular book the pair originally published thirty years ago. Alexander C. MacGregor contributed the foreword.

Scheuerman grew up listening to his grandpa’s stories about homesteading in eastern Washington. Visiting the Colville Reservation as a teenager, he met Chief Kamiakin’s grandson, who described what the land was like before fences restricted access to so many areas. Those early experiences became a significant influence in Scheuerman’s life, and across the years, he interviewed dozens of the region’s Native Americans and first-generation immigrants.

Moving with the seasons, Plateau Indian tribes dwelled along the region’s rivers, streams, and bunchgrass hills, maintaining an intimate relationship with the land and utilizing its natural bounty until the 1800s, when the U.S. government forced the majority onto reservations and opened the land to immigration. Native-born Americans and Canadians, Irish and British, Chinese and Japanese, Empire, Volga, and Black Sea Germans, Norwegians, and Swedes all came, and many formed distinct settlements. Most farmed or raised stock, but some built roads and railroads or mined for gold. Chapters covering the various groups depict events that prompted emigration, describe the settlers’ transitions and living conditions, chronicle significant people and families, discuss major influences that impacted the population, and recount how the various communities grew and changed.

A career historian and professional educator, Dr. Richard D. Scheuerman grew up on a small Palouse Country farm between Endicott and St. John, Washington. A retired Seattle Pacific University professor, he has published numerous books and articles on a variety of topics, most of which relate to the history and agriculture of the Inland Pacific Northwest. His writing has received the Governor’s Writers Award, Inland Northwest Magazine’s Best of Issue Article, and recognition as a finalist for the Washington State Book of the Year.

The recipient of more than sixty regional, national, and international awards for pictorial and commercial work, John Clement began his photography career in the mid-1970s and has exhibited in numerous galleries and art shows, including one in the permanent collection of the International Photography Hall of Fame.

Celebrating Palouse Country is paperback, 6″ x 9″ and 236 pages. The suggested retail price for the paperback is $34.95, and for the hardbound, $55. Both are available through bookstores nationwide, direct from Basalt Books at 800-354-7360, or online at basaltbooks.wsu.edu. The trade imprint of nonprofit academic publisher Washington State University Press in Pullman, Washington, Basalt Books concentrates on general interest titles about cooking, nature, history, science, and more for young children to older readers—all with a connection to the Northwest.

About the authors:

Retired Seattle Pacific University Associate Professor Dr. Richard D. Scheuerman grew up on a small Palouse Country farm between Endicott and St. John, Washington. He holds a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership from Gonzaga University, an M.A. in History from Pacific Lutheran University, and a B.A. in History and Education from Washington State University. The co-author of more than ten books on Pacific Northwest history, he has received the Washington State Historical Society’s Robert Gray Medal, the Washington Governor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, a Schneidmiller Foundation grant, and the University of California-Riverside Rupert Costo Medallion for Research in Native American History.

The recipient of more than sixty regional, national, and international awards for pictorial and commercial photography, John Clement began his career in the mid-1970s and has since exhibited in numerous galleries and art shows, including one in the permanent collection of the International Hall of Fame of Photography. He has two associate degrees in photography, as well as a Master of Photography degree from Professional Photographers of America.