Daniel Boone

Book excerpt: 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).