Customer Reviews

Crockett of Tennessee

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Since we homeschool this book fit right into our curriculum for daily story time...the kids couldn't wait to hear what would happen next... I found myself sitting up late at night just to read on, as each chapter unfolded to provide dramatic insights about what the life of Davy Crockett may have been like...This book has creatively woven historical FACT with creative insight into the thoughts and life of this almost mythical man...After reading this, we had the opportunity to visit Crockett Tavern near Morristown,TN, and it really re-inforced the history that my children absorbed from this book. We had hoped to read "Boone, a Novel" also by Cameron Judd, but were disappointed to find that it was no longer in print...

The novel "Crockett of Tennessee" is a fictionalized biography of an uncommon American frontiersman who frankly wouldn't be remembered except that he took strong political stances -- very often in opposition with his own best interests.

Cameron Judd has done a good job of sketching the real David Crockett (not "Davy," despite Walt Disney). In a marvelous scene in the book, Crockett meets President Andrew Jackson on a Washington City street after hours and argues with the President about just exactly who has shifted his views.

Crockett carries a good deal of historical weight as the avatar of the Scotch-Irish pioneer who pushes back the American frontier, damn the consequences and the Redskins. Cameron Judd's Crockett is not nearly so simplistic. Like Judd's character, the real David Crockett opposed the relocation of the eastern tribes and refused to take a more conciliatory political position. He lost his last campaign to be re-elected to the U.S. Congress.

In the wake of that campaign, he was quoted as having said, "You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas."

Cameron Judd, a Tennessean himself (graduated Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, TN, if I remember correctly) has given us a novel of a person far more real than the frontier legend of film.

I read Judd's other book (Boone)about early frontiersman Daniel Boone and liked it so much i ran out and grabbed a copy of Crockett as soon as i could get my hands on it. I expected a similar tale of long hunting and trapping excursions, encounters with Indians, and an overall historical/fiction representation of this great outdoorsman's life. Unfortunately, as I read on, the main emphasis was more on Crockett's political ties and town life.

Might have been a good history lesson for some but sure wasn't what I was looking for. I had to put it down. Get Boone if you can find it. It's a much better book.