The Canebrake Men
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Following the War of Independence against the British Crown, a band of Tennessee settlers begins to carve out a new state in a young nation but face the opposition of the federal government and bloody resistance from the Chickamauga Indians. In this untamed land Owen Killefer, a slender lad barely in his teens, will face a trial by fire at the hands of white men and Indians alike -- and find within himself a stout spirit as strong as that of any frontiersman.
The third volume in The Tennessee Frontier Trilogy, The Canebrake Men is a saga of adventure set in the period from 1785 to 1800. In it Cameron Judd paints a portrait of the unforgettable men and women whose vision, passion, and pain gave rise to the new nation, such as:
-- Joshua Coulter, who had made a life amid the dangers of the rugged frontier and had been tamed by the Tennessee Wilderness, only to discover again a deep restlessness that stirred in his heart
-- Owen Killefer, who set out for the Chickamauga country as a boy to avenge a bloody crime
-- Emaline Killefer, who was torn from her family in a bloody raid by a British deserter and taken to live among the Chickamauga as his unwilling wife
-- John Sevier, the frontiersman who led raids against the Indians and was named governor of a would-be state the federal government never recognized
-- Andrew Jackson, a brash young lawyer with a fiery temper, who first met Joshua Colter as an opponent in a brawl but soon became a strong ally and loyal friend
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.
