The Fort in the Wilderness: Or, The Soldier Boys of the Indian Trails
1905
After the French and Indian War, the Virginia frontier simmers with resentment. Chief Pontiac has united neighboring tribes against the British, and the wilderness that once promised adventure now brims with deadly danger. Two cousins, Dave and Rodney Morris, begin their story hunting deer in the deep woods, but the hunt soon transforms into something far more perilous when they stumble onto a war party and must race through the wilderness to warn an isolated frontier fort before the settlers inside meet a bloody dawn. Stratemeyer was the architect of American juvenile adventure fiction, and this 1905 entry in the Colonial Series showcases his gifts precisely: propulsive pacing, vivid frontier detail, and a sense that the young protagonists have stumbled into history's currents. The novel captures a pivotal and violent moment in colonial American history, when the old alliances had shattered and the frontier ran red. The cousins must draw on every ounce of courage and wilderness savvy to survive. For readers who grew up on adventure stories, or anyone curious about the origins of American series fiction, this novel offers an unvarnished time capsule of early twentieth-centuryjuvenile literature: its excitement, its historical perspectives, and its worldview.
