Customer Reviews

Simon Kenton: The Great Frontiersman

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If you are considering this book thinking that it might be an adventure novel about the life of Simon Kenton, it isn't. I learned about Kenton through the book The Frontiersman, by Allan W. Eckert. This book was an outstanding story of the life of Kenton and Tecumseh. The book by Ray Crain is more like reading from a history textbook though. In other words, this is not a story, but a presentation of a lot of facts about Kenton's life. Crain writes a weekly history column for the Urbana Daily Citizen in Urbana, Ohio. Since Urbana happens to be the town where Kenton is buried, Crain is very interested in his history. For those of us who are Simon Kenton fans, I think it is a must buy. It is an extremely short ( 52 pages ) book, but has a lot of interesting facts in it about Kenton that I had not seen elsewhere. It contains information about some of Kenton's surviving relatives. It also contains a lot more information about his youth, and about his religious conversion later in life.

If you want to fill in some of the holes in your history of Simon Kenton, this is a good book to buy. It is also a way to contribute to the work they are doing to try and preserve his legacy. Don't buy it if you want an interesting action yarn though. It is about as far away from that as you can get. It reminds me of an information book you would buy at a historical site. Still, as I've said, I think it is well worth buying.

I couldn't wait to get back to this book once I had opened it. It explained the Indian Wars, Daniel Boone, and Simon Kenton as if the author was there. I am looking for more books by this author