The Pioneer Boys of the Mississippi; Or, The Homestead in the Wilderness

The Ohio River runs cold and fast in the spring of 1810, and fourteen-year-old Bob Armstrong knows his younger brother Sandy isn't ready for the trapping grounds. But pride burns hotter than caution. When Sandy traps his own foot and a panther screams from the Kentucky shore, the brothers learn that the wilderness doesn't care about readiness, it demands courage. Bob and Sandy are pioneers dreaming of the legendary lands beyond the Mississippi, but first they must survive the river that runs through their own valley. Rival French trappers Jacques Larue and Henri Lacroix watch from the shadows, their intentions as murky as the fog over the water. The Ohio Valley in the early 1800s was no place for boys, but it was exactly where boys like the Armstrong brothers were forged into men. This is old-fashioned adventure fiction at its core: a story about brothers, risk, and the American impulse to push toward new frontiers. It endures because it captures something true about youth, that moment when you realize the world is larger and more dangerous than you imagined, and you must become larger too.