Customer Reviews

Kentucky Frontiersmen: The Adventures of Henry Ware, Hunter and Border Fighter

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Altsheler can paint a picture with words like no other author can. He is so descriptive with his words that you feel that you are right there in the midst of the story with the same feelings and senses as the protagonist, Henry Ware.

The Kentucky Frontiersmen is a newer version of the same book as the "The Young Trailers" that Altsheler wrote in the late 1800"s except a more modern version. The difference being that a lot of the slang is taken out and replaced with more modern words, there are illustrations and I believe that the print is larger.

I first read books from the "Young Trailer Series" back in the 50's when I was in grade school and they had a great influence on my life. I recently ordered some of the books from the Altsheler series from Amazon.com and enjoyed them again immensely. The theme represented throughout the series was the constant struggle to be the best and to be ready and prepared to prove it at anytime or it could cost an early Kentucky settler his life was a lesson that I took with me into competitive situations like sports, academics and the business world.

The "Kentucky Frontiersmen" teaches values that are so important especially to growing children that deal with responsibility, hard work, integrity, intelligence and the special type of people that built this country.

Every resident of Kentucky should read these books because historically they give an accurate view of what Kentucky was like back in the early days of settlement. What a special place Kentucky must have been and I'm sure, still is.

Sixty years ago when I first read this book it was titled The Young Trailers. I was ten years old. I'm delighted to find it still in print. It is still an exciting and educational read.

I grew up in a small town in the Pacific Northwest . Our little library carried all eight volumes of this frontier adventure series, of which The Young Trailers was the first episode. For several years I read and reread these marvelous stories. They made an indelible impression upon my mind and heart, and basically formed my image of America.

Author Joseph Altsheler was a newspaperman and prolific writer of romances and adventure stories of the American frontier. (The latter for readers of grades six through ten.) He was a knowledgeable man, well read in history, archeology, and botany (to mention but a few of his interests). He managed to weave his broad field of knowledge so skillfully into the narratives of his stories that the reader is unaware that he/she is being educated as well as entertained. He was a very successful and famous writer in the early 1900s.

Kentucky Frontiersman is written in Altsheler's usual master story teller, vivid, manner. Vivid is the key word here. Altsheler is a natural "yarn spinner". We experience the primordial landscape through the acute senses of the young hero, Henry Ware, a teen-ager who is keenly perceptive of the unspoiled verdant forests, clear streams, mighty rivers, deep caves and abundant flora and fauna of frontier Kentucky. (There are scenes of action, suspense, violence and death; but written appropriately for the age level.)

Without giving the plot away, there are just two points worth mentioning.

First is the sensible way Alsheler handles the irreconcilable confrontation with the Indians over the land. The Indians are not presented as inferior in any way to the Caucasian settlers. In fact the hero is captured by an Indian tribe and finds the primitive culture more amenable to his inner affinity than his settler upbringing. He happily "goes Native" and finds a deep spiritual affinity and unity with nature while living with the Indians.

Second, and importantly, Altsheler portrays in dramatic form the theory put forward by his contemporary, historian Frederick Jackson Turner. Turner's "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" was published in 1893, when Altsheler was age 31. Altsheler must have been familiar with Turner's work. Turner's thesis was that the spirit and success of the United States is directly tied to the country's westward expansion. According to Turner, the forging of the unique and rugged American identity occurred at the juncture between the civilization of settlement and the savagery of wilderness. This produced a new type of citizen - one with the power to tame the wild and one upon whom the wild had conferred strength and individuality.

The six volume set of The Young Trailers should be on the library shelves of all schools for grades six through ten. I know of no other comparable literature that conveys this important part of American history in such an accessible form for our young Americans. It is a part of American culture that is being lost, as our young citizens are being overwhelmed by trivia and gadgetry.

My husband read this book when he was 12 and now that he is 69 he still remembers the story. I think that this speaks for itself, this is a long time to remember a book. It is a great book for history and adventure.

This is a very good book to read for pleasure. It is well written and very entertaining, it is just not very historically correct. Several time periods are combined to make the story and someone with an interest in history may be put off by this