On Wednesday this past week, I got online with the library and downloaded a book to my Kindle. The only thing on my wish list that was available for check out was Follow The River, by James Alexander Thorn. So I checked it out.
I finished it on Saturday, and not any sooner only because I absolutly had to stop reading because my eyes were hurting so badly on Friday. It was one of those troublesome books that won't let me put it away for long, and so I neglect things like sleeping and keeping my husband company.
The story interested me because it is based on real events and people, it's historical, and set in a period of history that interests me greatly. So it was nearly destined to be a winner with me. And about three paragraphs in, I was hooked.
The action starts off right away, and the descriptive writing along with the events of the story and the story telling itself make it a very captivating read.
Follow the River tells the story of Mary Draper Ingles. In 1755, Mary, along with her two children, her sister-in-law, and a neighbor, were taken prisoner during a Shawnee Indian raid of their Virginia settlement. They were taken on a trip of several hundred miles along the rivers and across the peaks of the the Allegheny mountains to the Shawnee town where they were split up and given to different tribal groups.
Mary, determined to get back to her husband and her home, made the heart rending decision to leave her infant daughter, which she'd given birth to on the trail, and slipping away one afternoon, begin the impossible 600 mile trek back home. A woman in the wilderness, where no settlers had ever ventured before, with just a blanket, a tomahawk, her wits and her determination to go home, facing 600 miles of mountain passes and river crossings at the onset of winter.
True story with a remarkable outcome, and now I'm itching to go see these places in Virginia and West Virginia. Just adding to a ridiculously long list of future road trips. My list of "places to go" is like my list of "books to read." Both will be impossible to finish.
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