Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve always loved books about American history, including America’s westward expansion and the impacts on indigenous populations. I love Montana and I feel blessed to live there, but I am also very conscious that others lived there first, for many thousands of years. My first novel, Bone Necklace, explores these themes. When I am not writing, I am an American lawyer, an English solicitor, and an international arbitrator.


I wrote

Bone Necklace

By Julia Sullivan,

Book cover of Bone Necklace

What is my book about?

Inspired by true events, Bone Necklace captures the intensity, violence, and unexpected conclusion of America’s final “Indian War.” In the…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West

Julia Sullivan Why did I love this book?

Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage is the only non-fiction book on my list, but it is as readable as a novel, and it is foundational for anyone interested in the history of the American West. In 2014, HBO announced plans to produce a six-part mini-series with Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt, and Edward Norton as executive producers. I was really looking forward to that; however, filming was halted in 2016.  

Undaunted Courage is a biography of President Thomas Jefferson’s personal secretary, Meriwether Lewis. In 1803, Jefferson asks Lewis to lead an expedition up the Missouri River to the Rockies, through the mountains, down the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean, and back. This turns out to be an 8,000-mile journey through completely unmapped territory – a grand and dangerous quest. 

An important goal of the expedition is to find a navigable waterway across America, from sea to shining sea. The impossibility of this task becomes clear when the expedition reaches the Bitterroot Mountains in Montana. At a book-signing event some years ago, the author imagined the words that must have escaped Lewis’s mouth when he saw those impassable, ten-thousand foot, sheer vertical peaks. Ever since then, when I look at the Bitterroots, I sometimes catch myself thinking, “Oh Sh**!” 

Ambrose places the expedition, and Lewis’s life as a whole, within the broader context of America’s westward expansion and the government’s early “Indian policies.” The kindness with which the travelers are received by the Nez Perce and other tribes evokes a haunting sense of trust and hope. This aspect of Ambrose’s book was particularly interesting to me as I was researching my own book

According to Nez Perce tradition, Lewis’s co-captain, William Clark, left a Nez Perce woman pregnant. The boy grew up, and at 72 years old, was captured by the US Army after refusing to relocate to a crowded reservation. Imagine how that old man felt, having done no wrong, to be imprisoned by his own father’s people. 

Undaunted Courage is a work of outstanding scholarship and thrilling adventure. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in America’s westward expansion and the history of Montana.

By Stephen E. Ambrose,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked Undaunted Courage as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A chronicle of the two-and-a-half year journey of Lewis and Clark covers their incredible hardships and the contributions of Sacajawea.


Book cover of Lonesome Dove

Julia Sullivan Why did I love this book?

This book is the first of a four-part series written by Larry McMurtry. Lonesome Dove inspired a fabulous television mini-series starring Robert Duval, Tommy Lee Jones, and Danny Glover. 

Lonesome Dove is about two former Texas Rangers who leave their sunbaked speck of a town on the Texas-Mexico border to make a 1,500-mile cattle drive to Montana. The story is as big as the western landscape McMurtry describes, with storms and stampedes and rivers full of water moccasins, but it’s the characters that draw me in. I hold a particular place in my heart for old Pea Eye, who “never displayed the slightest ability to learn from his experience, though his experience was considerable. Time and again he would walk up on the wrong side of a horse that was known to kick, and then look surprised when he got kicked.”

If you like cattle drives, sweeping landscapes, and unforgettable characters, this book is for you. 

By Larry McMurtry,

Why should I read it?

18 authors picked Lonesome Dove as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize winning novel is a powerful, triumphant portrayal of the American West as it really was. From Texas to Montana, it follows cowboys on a grueling cattle drive through the wilderness.

It begins in the office of The Hat Creek Cattle Company of the Rio Grande.
It ends as a journey into the heart of every adventurer who ever lived . . .

More than a love story, more than an adventure, Lonesome Dove is an epic: a monumental novel which embraces the spirit of the last defiant wilderness of America.

Legend and fact, heroes and outlaws,…


Book cover of Dancing at the Rascal Fair

Julia Sullivan Why did I love this book?

This is the central volume in Ivan Doig’s Montana Trilogy. I enjoyed this entire series, but Dancing at the Rascal Fair was my favorite. It hasn’t been made into a film (yet!), but it did inspire a song by one of my favorite guitarists, John Floridis.

The book tells the story of two Scottish immigrants who, in 1889, decide to make a fresh start in the beautiful but imposing Rocky Mountains. With no prior experience as stockmen, they soon learn the cold, hard facts: “There are so goddamn many ways to be a fool a man can’t expect to avoid them all.” Montana is a place, our narrator says, where a man’s tools are not so much hammer, pick, and shovel, but “hope, muscle and time.”

Against this backdrop, Doig draws a portrait of friendship and love. There are sheep-shearing contests and raucous dances in a one-room schoolhouse. There are brutal winters and unrelenting battles of will. There is love of breathtaking intensity, and love born of heartbreak and stoic devotion. It is a gripping, evocatively crafted saga.

I had the pleasure of meeting Ivan Doig at a small bookstore in Hamilton, Montana, many years ago. I had just started writing my book, and I remember telling him that I was stuck. Doig, a prolific author, encouraged me not to give up. He then published seven more books before I finally finished mine.

By Ivan Doig,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Dancing at the Rascal Fair as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The central volume in Ivan Doig's acclaimed Montana trilogy, Dancing at the Rascal Fair is an authentic saga of the American experience at the turn of this century and a passionate, portrayal of the immigrants who dared to try new lives in the imposing Rocky Mountains.

Ivan Doig's supple tale of landseekers unfolds into a fateful contest of the heart between Anna Ramsay and Angus McCaskill, walled apart by their obligations as they and their stormy kith and kin vie to tame the brutal, beautiful Two Medicine country.


Book cover of The Horse Whisperer: A Novel

Julia Sullivan Why did I love this book?

The Horse Whisperer tells the story of a woman, her teenage daughter, and a horse named Pilgrim who leave New York City to spend some time at a ranch in Montana after a severe riding accident. The book inspired a movie by the same name, starring Robert Redford and Scarlett Johansson.

The ranch is owned by a man whose great patience, in combination with the serenity of the wide-open spaces, helps mend this broken family. It is an emotional journey that explores our ancient bonds with earth and sky. If you love horses and are looking for an easy read, this one is for you.

By Nicholas Evans,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked The Horse Whisperer as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The phenomenal number one bestseller, which sold over twenty million copies and was made into a classic film starring Robert Redford and Scarlett Johansson. This stunning 25th anniversary edition features exclusive new content from Nicholas Evans.

'A love story, a gripping adventure and an emotionally charged tale of redemption and human strength' Cosmopolitan

'Brilliance pervades this five-handkerchief weepie' The Times

'Wild horses couldn't drag me from this . . . a tear-jerking page-turner' Daily Mail

____________________

When Grace Maclean and her beloved horse, Pilgrim, are hit by a truck one snow-covered morning, their destinies become inextricably bound to one another.…


Explore my book 😀

Bone Necklace

By Julia Sullivan,

Book cover of Bone Necklace

What is my book about?

Inspired by true events, Bone Necklace captures the intensity, violence, and unexpected conclusion of America’s final “Indian War.” In the summer of 1877, a small band of Nez Perce warriors held off four converging armies while their families escaped to Canada. Other books have been written about the 500+ Nez Perce who were captured or killed in the conflict; Bone Necklace is unique in its focus on the nearly 300 who escaped.

Bone Necklace is a tale of survival in which the Nez Perce overcome staggering odds and win the grudging respect of a war-weary nation. While deeply rooted in American history, their story continues to resonate, illuminating modern debates around institutional racism, journalistic bias, and the call for courage in times of moral crisis.

Book cover of Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West
Book cover of Lonesome Dove
Book cover of A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

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Interested in Montana, cowboys, and Thomas Jefferson?

Montana 80 books
Cowboys 75 books
Thomas Jefferson 57 books