Jere Hungerford Wheelwright

It is 1717 and a young Jim Cheston. the heir of a wealthy Virginia family sets out to spend a year in the wilderness of the Bluegrass country where Daniel Boone and other settlers are trying to set up the settlement of Boonesborough. He arrives just before winter and quickly has to learn how to live in the wilderness without freezing to death and successfully hunting for enough food for himself and the other settlers to survive.

While on a salt boiling expedition with Boone and other men show more from the settlement, he and a colleague miss being captured by Shawnee Indians because they were out hunting for food. When separated in a storm, Jim proves he has learned survival skills by not panicking and making it back to Boonesborough to warn the settlement about Boone's capture.

He falls in love with Liza Bonham, a woman to have at your side when living in the wilderness. This relationship causes him much trouble as he and she know that she will not be happy living back in civilized Virginia if they move there. Does he stay in the West with Liza or does he move back home to be with his grandmother and father to run the family estate?

There are also the Indian raids and as this is a historical novel written by a historian, there is much detail about the daily lives of the men & women who settle the lands beyond the Appalachian Mountains. There is also some detail about the suspicions that Daniel Boone was a Tory and thus sympathetic to the British in the Revolutionary War that was taking place at the same time period as this novel's story. In fact in the novel, Boone is court-martialed following his successful defense of Boonesborough for his supposed Tory sympathies but found not guilty. show less