Book review of The Taking of Jemima Boone: Colonial Settlers, Tribal Nations, and the Kidnap That Shaped America by Matthew Pearl

For Matthew Pearl, the kidnapping of Jemima Boone, daughter of Daniel Boone, serves as entree to his new historical past of the struggle on the western frontier within the American Revolution. Combating on the frontier was not merely a consequence of the American break from Britain in 1776, however one in every of its principal causes. The British authorities, to trim expenditures in America, in 1763 suspended western settlement, which often provoked battle with Indians of the Ohio Valley. People, together with precise settlers akin to Boone and speculators like George Washington, resented the suspension and interpreted it as an infringement of their rights.