Matthew Pearl's "The Taking of Jemima Boone" - A Thrilling Adventure of Mystery and Suspense

Marjorie O.: This book was very interesting

United States on Feb 26, 2024

Patricia Yates: This book is a great history book and that's how it reads. I was looking for more of a traditional story...dialogue, etc. None of that in here. The title makes it seem more about Jemima Boone than you get in the story. Very little about her. But from the historical point-of-view, I learned a lot.

United States on Jun 08, 2023

Lewis F. Murphy: This is a great story. Reveals Daniel Boone as a complex, thinking and heroic man. Jemima too is every bit his daughter - loyal and resourceful to the end. Her taking was a spark to a war among Native Americans (mostly Shawnee), Colonial settlers, and the British in Kentucky and the Mid-West as the American Revolution raged to the East. Well written, interesting narrative history. Couldn't put it down. Learned a lot. Found myself telling family and friends about what happened. Have read a bit about Plains tribes but clearly more to learn about the Eastern tribes and their clashes with the expanding wave of settlers.

United States on Sep 22, 2022

amachinist: Much that is written about Daniel Boone (1734-1820) is hagiography. This work of non-fiction, underscores the important role the Boone family played in the nascent period of the United States. It is an exciting chronicle highlighting three major events.

The first event is the kidnapping of Jemima Boone and two girlfriends by the Shawnee on July 14, 1776. Imagine the fear Boone's wife, Rebecca, felt when she saw from the ramparts of the Boonesboro fortress, the flash of a tomahawk as the girls' canoe drew closer to the banks of the Kentucky River. Alerting her husband Daniel, he and a small posse tracked the kidnappers 45 miles through dense forest to save the girls. The author suggests that James Fenimore Cooper's novel, THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS is based on this incident.

Two years later, Boone and other settlers gathering salt, were themselves captured by a party of Shawnee. Boone feared for his own life since he had killed the son of the Shawnee chief, Blackfish while saving his daughter Jemima. Boone reasoned with the chief and in a masterful bit of negotiation, Boone was adopted by the chief as a "replacement" son. Boone learned the Shawnee language and tribal...

United States on Dec 28, 2021

,xbdhsjdbdbaj: I had read a biography of Daniel Boone and recently read about publication of the book. I immediately acquired a copy of Pearl's book. I was not disappointed. I could not put the book down. The account of Jemima Boone's kidnapping, rescue, and the subsequent events that followed is well researched and seamlessly intertwined. The author did a masterful job of placing the kidnapping in the larger context of the Revolutionary War and westward expansion in Colonial America. The author gave us suspenseful accounts of the kidnapping, rescue, siege of Kentucky settlements, and the internal leadership fights that almost brought down Daniel Boone and his family. My only disappointment was when I turned the last page of book. Nonfiction at its best.

United States on Nov 23, 2021