Promptly at the end of three days of fasting Boone knew that the war
party would set forth no matter what the weather. It was a bad omen
otherwise. In single file, at spaced intervals, the painted warriors
would move from the town, firing their rifles slowly one after the
other... -from Chapter XIV This semifictionalized biography of the
legendary frontiersman, first published in 1921, rings with desperate
dialogue ("We'll be caught if we stay here... the Indians are not far
behind us") and gung-ho wilderness adventure. From Boone's childhood
along the banks of the Delaware River-full of escapades "any normal and
healthy boy would have revelled in"-to his cantankerous old age, in
which he chafed to go further west to escape the encroachment of
civilization into his beloved Kentucky, this is a highly entertaining
life of the man who was never lost, but was "bewildered once for three
days." American writer STEWART EDWARD WHITE (1873-1946) wrote of his own
wilderness adventures in The Claim Jumpers (1901) and The Blazed Trail
(1902). His historical novels include Gold (1913), The Gray Dawn (1915),
and The Rose Dawn (1920).