Kindred of the Dust [Paperback]

Peter B. Kyne (Author), Dean Cornwell (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2005

1920. The novel begins: In the living-room of the Dreamerie, his home on Tyee Head, Hector McKaye, owner of the Tyee Lumber Company and familiarly known as The Laird, was wont to sit in his hours of leisure, smoking and building castles in Spain-for his son Donald. Here he planned the acquisition of more timber and the installation of an electric-light plant to furnish light, heat, and power to his own town of Port Agnew; ever and anon he would gaze through the plate-glass windows out to sea and watch for is ships to come home. Whenever The Laird put his dreams behind him, he always looked seaward. In the course of time, his home-bound skippers, sighting the white house on the headland and knowing that The Laird was apt to be up there watching, formed the habit of doing something that pleased their owner mightily. When the northwest trades held steady and true, and while the tide was still at the flood, they would scorn the services of the tug that went out to meet them and come ramping into the bight, all their white sails set and the glory of the sun upon them; as they swept past, far below The Laird, they would dip his house-flag-a burgee, scarlet-edged, with a fir tree embroidered in green on a field of white-the symbol to the world that here was a McKaye ship. And when the house-flag fluttered half-way to the deck and climbed again to the masthead, the soul of Hector McKaye would thrill. Due to the age and scarcity of the original we reproduced, some pages may be spotty or faded. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

Product Details

• Paperback: 392 pages
• Publisher: Kessinger Publishing (June 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0766196887
• ISBN-13: 978-0766196889
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,272,301 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Tough Love Sawmill Style, February 6, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Kindred of the Dust (The Bestsellers of 1920) (Library Binding)

Son of Scottish tough guy sawmill baron goes off to college in the East, incidentally doubling Dad's money by investing in forestland and paying for college with the profits (thus handing Dad back all the college money upon graduation), then coming back to try to measure up to Dad.

Son does it, along the way filling the redemption theme of the book by falling in love with the woman of bad repute who lives at the edge of proper sawmill society with her illegitimate child.

Contains fistfights and other Northwest bygone era male behaviors, and includes vivid descriptions of father blowing off a cannon each morning to start the day (lives on a cliff, so it's cool).

By the end of the book, Son is Dad's boy, and everybody better just accept the wife he has chosen. Wife experiences this act of grace and adoption with gratefulness, and turns her own brand of toughness and love into supporting Son.

Good themes, basic story, blow off the cannon, take over the dynasty.

Then put the book down and return to your own comparatively miserable data-entry existence, buoyed by this outdated but invigorating book.