Description de l’éditeur
Finalist for the Spur Award: The author of The Overmountain Men and The Border Men concludes his epic adventure of Tennessee's early history.
The United States of America has just been born from the fires of revolution. But in the wilds of Tennessee in the Southwest Territory, a fire still burns—especially in the heart of fifteen-year-old Owen Killefer.
For Owen witnessed the massacre of his family by Tom Turndale—a depraved marauder who deserted the British during the war to live with the Chickamauga and plague the frontier settlements. And worse, Turndale took Owen's sister captive as his prize.
Now, amidst the growing unrest and hostilities between the new Americans pushing ever westward and the native Indians who have trusted too many broken treaties, Owen must find a way to save his sister and avenge his family.
"Judd writes a mean story." —Zane Grey's West
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The final installment in Judd's ( The Border Men ) trilogy about the late 18th-century American frontier is set in Franklin, the territory that eventually became the state of Tennessee. Fourteen-year-old Owen Killefer survives a nighttime ambush by sadistic Redcoat deserter Tom Turndale. Turndale has killed or wounded Killefer's relatives and taken his sister, Emaline, as his captive bride. The balance of the story traces Owen's coming of age during his quest to rescue Emaline from Turndale, who lives among the Chickamauga tribe. In an attempt to supply badly needed background information, Judd has his characters deliver proclamations about every imaginable topic to practically anyone who will listen, as if the American frontier were tamed almost exclusively by curiously verbose semiliterates of outstanding moral fiber--and by the women who loved them. Unfortunately, neither these expository speeches nor the gratuitious epilogue succeed in making sense of a muddled, disjointed storyline that is burdened with too many coincidences and too much tragedy.
