Then why only 3 stars? That's for the romance.I like the book overall, but can live without so much of the love triangle. I loved (and really still love) the Appalachian Mountains. I grew up in the Smokies, the eastern area of Tennessee near the North Carolina and Virginia border. I read only 3 or 4 of her books but there is more to them than simply the romance angle. Janice Holt Giles works are sometimes considered more appealing to the tastes of the female of the species and I suppose that may be at least partly true. This is the story of a man and the woman he loves as they settle in the frontier lands of Kentucky and the Cumberland Mountain region. *I wish the cover I remember were here on the sight.* I read these (again) back in the 60s or 70s.
All subsidiary characters and historical events are authentic, set against the background of a country the author knows and loves. Only the three central characters are fictional. Few today realize how close Henderson came to winning out.In her research, Giles studied the journals of the early Kentuckians and has retold their story in their own easy-flowing, cadenced prose. Others, like David, based their claims on the authority of Virginia. Many, including Boone, held land grants from Judge Henderson's Transylvania Company. And, although united in war against the British and their Indian allies, the settlers were at odds among themselves. Too late, he learned that the girl he had dreamed of marrying was the wife of his enemy.ĭavid and Bethia belonged to a generation that never knew or expected security, and the background of their story is one of outnumbered and ill-equipped, were hard put to defend their forts. It was for her that he cleared his patch of forest, planted crops, and built a cabin.
No love of land or home or woman had been strong enough to hold David - until he met Bethia. Such a man was David Cooper, who had hunted the Kentucky wilderness with Daniel Boone before the first settlers crossed the Appalachians. In her historical novel, first published in 1953, Giles invited the reader to experience the danger and beauty of life on the American frontier.Many of the frontiersmen were hunter in search of escape from an ever advancing civilization, seeking freedom and space. The Kentuckians of Janice Holt Giles's title were that hardy band of angels who straggled through Cumberland Gap in the 1770s and carved their farms from the wilderness of Virginia's westernmost country.
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