Blood and treasure : Daniel Boone and the fight for America's first frontier /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The Instant New York Times Besteller

National Bestseller

"[The] authors' finest work to date." -- Wall Street Journal

The explosive true saga of the legendary figure Daniel Boone and the bloody struggle for America's frontier by two bestselling authors at the height of their writing power--Bob Drury and Tom Clavin.

It is the mid-eighteenth century, and in the thirteen colonies founded by Great Britain, anxious colonists desperate to conquer and settle North America's "First Frontier" beyond the Appalachian Mountains commence a series of bloody battles. These violent conflicts are waged against the Native American tribes whose lands they covet, the French, and the mother country itself in an American Revolution destined to reverberate around the world.

This is the setting of Blood and Treasure, and the guide to this epic narrative is America's first and arguably greatest pathfinder, Daniel Boone--not the coonskin cap-wearing caricature of popular culture but the flesh-and-blood frontiersman and Revolutionary War hero whose explorations into the forested frontier beyond the great mountains would become the stuff of legend. Now, thanks to painstaking research by two award-winning authors, the story of the brutal birth of the United States is told through the eyes of both the ordinary and larger-than-life men and women who witnessed it.

This fast-paced and fiery narrative, fueled by contemporary diaries and journals, newspaper reports, and eyewitness accounts, is a stirring chronicle of the conflict over America's "First Frontier" that places the reader at the center of this remarkable epoch and its gripping tales of courage and sacrifice.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• A Mote to Readers (p. xiii)
• Prologue (p. 1)
• Part 1 The Frontier
• 1 A Patient Pathfinder (p. 9)
• 2 "The Single Nation to Fear" (p. 19)
• 3 The Long Hunters (p. 27)
• 4 Into the Yadkin (p. 35)
• 5 The Ohio Country (p. 43)
• 6 Kanta-Ke (p. 52)
• 7 Braddock's Folly (p. 58)
• 8 Rebecca Bryan (p. 65)
• 9 The Cherokee Wars (p. 74)
• 10 "Boone's Surprise" (p. 81)
• Part II The Explorers
• 11 "An Execrable Race" (p. 91)
• 12 Pontiac's Demise (p. 102)
• 13 By Royal Proclamation (p. 110)
• 14 The Gap (p. 118)
• 15 The Warrior's Path (p. 129)
• 16 "Without ... Even a Horse or a Dog" (p. 142)
• 17 "A Second Paradise" (p. 151)
• 18 Cold Rain Mixed with the Tears (p. 157)
• Part III The Settlers
• 19 A White Invasion (p. 165)
• 20 Lord Dunmore's War (p. 171)
• 21 Logan's Lament (p. 180)
• 22 Boone's Trace (p. 185)
• 23 A New World (p. 195)
• 24 Revolution (p. 204)
• 25 Kidnapped (p. 211)
• 26 An Indian Army (p. 226)
• 27 Abandoned Setdements (p. 235)
• 28 "The Best Little Indian Fight" (p. 241)
• Part IV The Conquest
• 29 Taken (p. 253)
• 30 Shel-tow-ee (p. 264)
• 31 A Mistrusted Hero (p. 274)
• 32 Prelude to a Siege (p. 281)
• 33 A Haze of Stinking Sulfurous Smoke (p. 288)
• 34 "Widder Maker" (p. 296)
• 35 War in the West (p. 303)
• 36 Boone's Station (p. 313)
• 37 The Moravian Massacre (p. 323)
• 38 Death at Blue Licks (p. 330)
• 39 "Blood and Treasure" (p. 337)
• Epilogue (p. 343)
• Acknowledgments (p. 357)
• Endnotes (p. 359)
• Selected Bibliography (p. 369)
• Index (p. 373)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

No. 1 New York Times best-selling coauthors Clavin and Drury (The Heart of Everything That Is) again join forces, this time investigating the legendary Daniel Boone, who may or may not have worn a coonskin hat but was certainly there at the bloody birth of a nation and helped forge its path. With a 125,000-copy first printing.

Publishers Weekly Review

Clavin and Drury return (after Valley Forge) with an enlightening biography of Daniel Boone set against the backdrop of 18th-century America's conflicts with England and Native tribes. Born in 1734 to English immigrants in Pennsylvania, Boone was drawn "to the backcountry's contours and creatures," and became a proficient hunter at a young age. As a husband and father, Boone's restlessness and need for adventure caused him to relocate his family several times, and in 1773 he led a group of colonists in the first attempt to establish a British settlement in present-day Kentucky. The immigrants met with fierce resistance from the Shawnee and other local tribes; Boone's 16-year-old son, James, was killed in an ambush. Clavin and Drury detail numerous atrocities committed by colonists and Natives during the settling of Kentucky and describe how Boone rescued his kidnapped daughter and her two friends from a Shawnee camp in 1776. The authors also pay close attention to Boone's June 1778 escape from the Shawnee after months of captivity; his four-day, 160-mile journey to warn his namesake settlement, Boonesborough, of an impending attack; and successful leadership of the outpost's defenses during the siege. Clavin and Drury successfully separate fact from fiction while keeping the pages turning. History buffs will be entertained. (Apr.)

Kirkus Book Review

Popular historians Drury and Clavin deliver a ripsnortin' tale of the early frontier and its first and most powerful legend. The authors open on a frightful note, depicting a 16-year-old son of Daniel Boone being tortured "on the frozen scree beneath the Cumberland Mountain's shadow line," a Shawnee warrior tearing his fingernails and toenails off before finally killing him. Undeterred, Boone led a party of settlers over the Cumberland Gap, made his way into Kentucky, and in time established a walled compound on the Kentucky River. The narrative seldom finds a moment of calm thereafter. As Drury and Clavin observe, the arrival of Whites across the Appalachians began "a slow-motion genocide" for many Native peoples, not least of them the Shawnee, Boone's principal foe. Boone was unusual for many reasons, not least because he "respected, if not completely understood, the spirituality and philosophy that underpinned [the Natives'] culture" and "never underestimated their intelligence." Boone's arrival also figured in a complex series of conflicts that involved France, Britain, Indigenous peoples, and the newly founded U.S. Keeping his fellow settlers alive in the bargain landed Boone in more than one spot of trouble. He was held prisoner by the British, accused of loyalist sympathies by frontier revolutionaries, and, in the end, recognized as a true patriot whose actions kept the British from flanking the Continental Army in the South. A particularly exciting set piece is the authors' account of a combined British/Canadian/Native siege of Boonesborough in 1778, with bad results for one loud-voiced spokesman for the besiegers: "The next time Pompey showed his face, Collins blew it into the Kentucky River." The war on the frontier became bloodier still. Though not as comprehensive as John Mack Faragher's 1992 biography Daniel Boone, this book offers a vivid account of Boone's frontier years, one that may not be for the faint of heart. A well-written, fast-paced account that neatly bridges the gap between historical fact and fiction. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Bob Drury is an American journalist and author who has been nominated for three National Magazine Awards and a Pulitzer Prize. He has reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, Liberia, Bosnia, Northern Ireland, and Darfur. He is also the author, co-author, or editor of nine nonfiction books, including the New York Times bestselling Halsey's Typhoon and Last Men Out. In 2015, his nonfiction book, The Heart of Everything That Is: The Untold Story of Red Cloud, An American Legend, also became a bestseller.

(Bowker Author Biography)