Novels set in early period America

[Lin Rhea]

Not to get bogged down in terminology, I mean 1650-1850 when the muzzle loader was in it's prime. No pun intended.

I have read most, if not all of Terry Johnston's mountain man series about Titus Bass (enjoyed that), but I'm needing something new to start. I prefer a series but a single novel is always welcome too. Historically based is ok but fiction is as well. What can you recommend? Thanks in advance.

 

[nhmoose]

Kenneth Roberts books:

North west Passage
Arundel
Rabble in Arms
The Lively Lady
Boon Island

William Drummond Stewart's Edward Warren

Stewart Edward White's The Long Rifle

LeGrand Cannon Jr.'s Look to the Mountain

Aaron Fletcher's Frontier Fires

All Fiction for a Good start!

 

[BullRunBear]

Try Harriette Simpson Arnow's "Seedtime on the Cumberland" and "Flowering of the Cumberland". They are set in the Kentucky and Tennessee areas of late 1700s to about 1805.

 

[BullRunBear]

Almost forgot. Check out the "Forbes Road" series by Robert J. Shade. They are set on the Pennsylvania frontier. I believe there are four in the series so far.

 

[Arcturus]

Allan Eckert's series of six books starting with The Frontiersmen is a great read. Real people, dates, and events, with the addition of dialogue and written more in the style of an adventure novel than a history book. The really cool thing is that it's all (mostly) true, and though certain elements were taken from legends or accounts that we now know are questionable, there's a lot more real history here than you'll ever get from Hollywood or most school textbooks for that matter. Eckert makes the past come alive. The notes at the back of these well-researched books are great as well.

 

[tenngun]

Eckert also did some novels that are good and faster reads then his narritives. Louie Lamore' saketts land,far blue mountains,warriors path,and jubal sakett are fun reads. Lamore walked the land he was on and you can travel to the places his stories were told and walk the path. The books are adventure stories so don't look for them to be fully hc :haha: but are fun reads.
Michners cheasapeake and Texas while also not spot on do capture a general sense of the time and place with out being preschy the characters are presented from a sympathetic point of view.

 

[longbow-hunter]

Check out S. Thomas Baily's books The Gauntlet Runner. I'm looking forward to book 7. Very good read.

 

[rijerolmon]

Check out books by Win Blevins, featured in Muzzleloader magazine a while ago.

 

[Lin Rhea]

Thanks guys. I've read Lamour's over and over. I have two of Eckert's books ordered and will research the other ones y'all suggested.

Thanks so much.

 

[Robert Scheffler]

Drums along the Mohawk is a favorite. Can't remember the author's name.

 

[Maven]

Walter D. Edmonds was the author.

 

[54ball]

You can't forget James Fennimore Cooper.

While LOTM and some of the others may be a hard read, I found his last, the Deerslayer to be really good and enjoyable.

For a bio there's this one by Claiborne....
Link Life and Times of Sam Dale

 

[BillinOregon]

54ball: Thanks so much for that link to the Dale biography. I am already on page 36, which offers a wonderful description of the clothing and equipment of a "troop of horse" patrolling the Georgia frontier, circa 1793!

 

[BillinOregon]

Here's wattle and daub construction:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCKkHqlx9dE

A true wigwam with a long oval footprint could be made pretty cozy, I am thinking.

 

[nhmoose]

Here's wattle and daub construction:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCKkHqlx9dE

A true wigwam with a long oval footprint could be made pretty cozy, I am thinking.

Huh? wrong post somehow?

 

[Flint62Smoothie]

Not as much into the arms, but the most fascinating book I read of the Colonial times (about REAL people too) was "Come Spring" by Ben Ames Williams, about a wilderness family growing up in southern Maine (Union, which was part of the Commonwealth of Mass back then) right before the war for independence.

It goes into extensive detail of the early life and strife and how the men were always cutting wood. The title comes for the weeks and months before Spring and when things started growing ... as the family was literally STARVING!

For me, the hardships of the daily details of simply surviving was quite vivid.

From an Amazon review:

"Come Spring" was written by Ben Ames Williams in 1940. It has been published several times since because it is an enduring classic. Mima is the main character of the book, a young woman with a deep inner strength. We meet her at the very beginning of the book, as she and her family are on a boat taking them to the Maine wilderness at the start of the American Revolution. The story shows the hardships and heartbreak of taming the New World and the deep, abiding love that keeps the families going. Ben Ames Williams is famous for his contemporary writings, such as "Leave Her to Heaven" (which was made into a movie), but I feel that his historical fiction is where he excells. The families featured in "Come Spring" truly did exist, forming the history of Union, Maine. This is an outstanding book and I recommend it for anyone who loves romance, history and excitement."

 

[Lin Rhea]

These are wonderful suggestions. Thank you so much.

 

[Arcturus]

I strongly recommend you read The Frontiersmen first. Maybe I'm biased being from Ohio (with colonial ancestors from Virginia), but this story with Simon Kenton and Tecumseh as the two central characters is perhaps Eckert's best. I also really like That Dark and Bloody River... not in the six book series, but set in the Ohio valley from pre-Rev colonial times through the Revolution, and the Ohio Indian Wars of the 1790s that really decided the fate of the continent. Dominant characters include Samuel Brady, Lewis Wetzel, and Simon Girty.

 

[Captjoel]

When you tire from your tales of fiction, "1776" by David McCullough is very well written and can add much understanding to our early plight's with the motherland.

I have also enjoyed "With Musket & Tomahawk" The Saratoga campaign and the Wilderness War of 1777, by Michael O. Logusz

If you are anything like me, finding a good story that includes a lot of pictures :grin: , "A Young Patriot" The American Revolution as experienced by our Boy, by Jim Murphy
This read goes by very quickly and once started, you will have a very hard time to put it down!

One more book that I will admit that I am still not finished with. "Adams" "An American Dynasty" by Francis Russell.
I am gleaning the realm of this very interesting family, reading a chapter at a time in between other reading's. A lot to comprehend all at once. But most enjoyable!

 

[Crow Beads]

X2! on the Forbes Road series by Robert Shade. These will be classics if enough folks discover them. There is great action, accurate descriptions of firearms (the main character, Wend Eckert is a gunsmith), very beautiful love interests and best of all, Shade doesn't dwell on the horrendous cruelties practiced by both Indians and whites as some other authors excessively wallow in. Instead, he concentrates on developing his characters. Many of these really existed. The books are extremely well researched for historical accuracy. You won't be able to put them down.