Daniel Boone and Me: A Great Review

I was honored to find this review from one of my blogging buddies and a fellow teacher, Pete Springer.

As a fan of historical fiction and having read The Last Pilgrim by Noelle Granger, I snatched up Daniel Boone and Me as soon as it became available. The story begins when two children, Eliza (10) and Thatch (4) hide in a root cellar when their home is attacked by Shawnee Indians. Tragically, the children become orphans when their parents are killed in the attack. Eliza initially tries to protect Thatch from learning the truth about their parents. Daniel Boone comes across the children and, after learning they have no relatives, offers to take them to a fort, named after him, called Boonesborough. Many families live inside the confines of the fort under Colonel Boone’s direction. Daniel’s wife, Rebecca, already has eight children, but she readily agrees. Eliza and Thatch quickly become part of the family, taking on chores and learning the ways of a wilderness family.

Though Granger indicates that this story is told from the perspective of the point of view of White people through Eliza’s voice, I appreciated that the author didn’t try to glorify or exaggerate Boone’s life. There were plenty of hardships as well as great times. Boone is captured by Indians at one point and is gone for so long that Rebecca fears he has died. She eventually moves from the fort taking most of her biological children and Thatch with her. Eliza, still longing that Boone may return, decides to stay at the fort with Boone’s oldest daughter, Jemima, who is now married to Simon.

Boone eventually escapes from the Indians and returns to the fort, but by this point, his reputation has taken a hit. Some people living at the fort believe the rumors that Boone became friendly with the British and the Indians. Though he is still in charge, the rumors never go away completely. After fending off several attacks on the fort by the combined forces of the Shawnee and the British, Boone finally decides to leave the fort to reunite with Rebecca. From this point on, Eliza and Boone do not live together, so the author follows Eliza. Still, Eliza and Boone cross paths after this, so we continue to learn more about Boone. He gets involved in government and many business ventures. Many of these endeavors do not go well, and the Boones move several more times.

Granger does a marvelous job of portraying Daniel Boone’s life, sharing his triumphs and failures. It is the kind of read one doesn’t get in a history book.

I thought I would give you a little snippet from the book to whet your appetite to read it!

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Probably eighty people lived in the fort — free men, some slaves, boys, but only a few women and girls. Most of the men had claimed land in areas around the fort and worked their land, just as my parents had done — planting crops, harvesting, or hunting, depending on the season. I often worried when I saw that among all these people, no one took charge of guarding the back gate of the fort and only sometimes did a guard stand at the front one.

One morning, after me and Levina, who was going on ten like me, had finished a considerable amount of washing and had hung the clothes to dry, Colonel Boone himself approached me. He carried a long rifle crosswise in his arms.

“Eliza,” he said, “my wife knows how to hunt and she’s a dead shot. All my children know how to hunt, so I think you should too. You have to be able to take care of yourself and Thatch, especially if anything should happen to me or Rebecca.”

Levina, who stood beside me, nodded. “I can shoot and I got me some rabbits not long ago.”

“I’ve gone hunting with my pa,” I replied, “but he never showed me how to shoot.”

“So come with me now. And leave your bonnet here.”

Levina gave me a friendly push. “You go on with Pa.”

I followed his long strides across the meadow outside the fort, past the corn and vegetable patches, and into the dense, surrounding woods. The moccasins let me walk without making much noise. The colonel had showed me how make my skirts less of a bother when I had to walk through the bushes, by bunching them up into my belt front and back, making them like pants.

 “Are we hunting a deer today, Colonel Boone?” I whispered, loud enough for him to hear me.

He responded with that chuckle of his. “Whenever you hunt deer, the hardest part is finding them. So we’ll just see what’s out here. Maybe rabbits.”

We spent some time scouting, with the colonel checking for tracks and other signs and showing me what he saw. I knew he was very skilled at this, and I vowed to learn the signs myself. He showed me some bear scat, a pile of large black turds big as Colonel Boone’s foot. Rabbit scat looked different, small round droppings, and when we found a clearing with a lot of it, we stopped.

“I’m going to show you how to load the rifle, Eliza, so pay attention,” he said quietly. He stood the rifle on its stock and took the powder horn from his belt, uncorking it and pouring some powder into the barrel of the rifle.

“How do you know how much powder to put in?” I lowered my voice, too.

“I don’t know, I just do. I’ll show you the right amount later.” Then he plugged the powder horn back up and took a small piece of greasy cloth from his bag along with a lead ball. Wrapping the ball in the scrap of cloth, he pushed it into the barrel. Then he slid out a long rod from a holder on the side of the rifle and used it to push the ball down into the barrel. “You have to push hard on this ramrod to make sure you’ve got the ball all the way down, girl.” Then he lifted the rifle and half-cocked the firing pin, which made a clicking sound. A small amount of powder then went into the pan in front of the firing pin. “You got to light this powder to get the rifle to fire,” he explained.

“How?”

“See here, this piece that looks like a hammer? It holds a flint. When I pull the trigger, the flint strikes this piece of metal in front of it and creates a spark. The spark lights the powder in the pan and then the gun goes off.”

“This all seems pretty hard, Colonel Boone.” I frowned.

“You’re right, but you’re a smart girl, you’ll learn. Mind, it takes some time to reload for another shot. That’s the problem with these darn rifles. Now, let’s get down on the ground. I’ll prop the rifle up for you, and I want you to pull the hammer all the way back. When you see a rabbit, sight it along the barrel and pull the trigger.”

I did as he told me, with the stock resting against my shoulder, but I got nervous, fearing I would mess things up. I practiced sighting along the barrel. We waited, breathing quietly. After a right long time, a rabbit hopped into view. I got him in my sight, but my hand shook as I pulled the trigger. The push back from the rifle shot hurt my shoulder, surprising me. I’m not sure if I was more surprised or hurt. And I missed the rabbit.

“You have to keep a steady arm, Eliza. But you’ll get another chance. Right now we gotta move on. All those rabbits have hightailed it.” 

We had to walk a ways to find another bunch of rabbit scat. This time, I reloaded the rifle by myself and spread out on the ground, elbows fixed firmly. I took a deep breath and held my whole self steady, feeling I could do this and knowing there’d be a kick to my shoulder. I could hardly believe it when I hit a rabbit!

“You did well, Eliza,” said Colonel Boone. “You’re going to make a good hunter.”

 I beamed with pride. I couldn’t have felt better if my father had said it. By the end of the day, we had five rabbits, including two I’d nailed. “Are deer a lot harder to shoot, Colonel Boone?”

“Yessiree. And harder to find. We’ll do some deer hunting this winter on our usual trek.”

During the following months, I learned a lot more about tracking and eventually became a good shot, often bringing back rabbits and other small animals for the pot. I once made a mistake and brought back a polecat, both of us stinking to high heavens. Mrs. Boone was not particularly pleased and had me wash thoroughly in a large barrel of water.

Despite my new skill, I remained very afraid of running into Indians, so I always asked someone with experience to come with me when I hunted.

In October, the whole family, even the little ones, packed up and went on what Colonel Boone called their winter hunt. We roamed the far reaches of western Kentucky, hunting deer and bear, and I got better at reading tracks. The quiet of the forests and the wide open spaces tasted of freedom, and I understood the colonel loved roaming.

Whenever we stopped for a few days, he had us build a three-sided lean-to and cover it with brush. The open side faced the fire. In the evenings, we’d fill our bellies from the animals we’d shot, along with the biscuits Mrs. Boone made over the fire. We learned to sleep on a bed of hemlock branches or piles of dried leaves, with our feet to the fire to keep them warm.

That weren’t to say this trek was a fun adventure. Many times, we were wet and chilled to the bone by the time we found a place to hole up for a day or two. We slogged through piles of snow, and my feet darn near froze before I could get dry socks on. The little ones often whined, and poor Mrs. Boone spent a lot of time tending to them, in addition to cooking and trying to keep us dry. Thatch tried to help, but he liked trailing after Colonel Boone a lot more.

When I shot my first deer, I discovered I didn’t much like the gutting and skinning of it. When I’d finished and washed my hands and arms off in a nearby stream of icy water, the colonel told me, “We gotta hoppus your deer back to camp.”

“Hoppus? What does that mean?” I asked. What a strange word!

“It’s how we carry deer carcasses.”

I watched as he tied the front and rear legs on each side of my deer together, making straps out of the legs. Putting his arms through the tied legs, he hefted the deer onto his back. “When you’re older and stronger, you can do this yourself.”

I just watched in wonder.

I hope you will enjoy my new book!