The Canebrake Men

By Cameron Judd

Book Overview

Following the War of Independence against the British Crown, a band of Tennessee settlers begins to carve out a new state in a young nation but face the opposition of the federal government and bloody resistance from the Chickamauga Indians. In this untamed land Owen Killefer, a slender lad barely in his teens, will face a trial by fire at the hands of white men and Indians alike -- and find within himself a stout spirit as strong as that of any frontiersman.

The third volume in The Tennessee Frontier Trilogy, The Canebrake Men is a saga of adventure set in the period from 1785 to 1800. In it Cameron Judd paints a portrait of the unforgettable men and women whose vision, passion, and pain gave rise to the new nation, such as:
-- Joshua Coulter, who had made a life amid the dangers of the rugged frontier and had been tamed by the Tennessee Wilderness, only to discover again a deep restlessness that stirred in his heart
-- Owen Killefer, who set out for the Chickamauga country as a boy to avenge a bloody crime
-- Emaline Killefer, who was torn from her family in a bloody raid by a British deserter and taken to live among the Chickamauga as his unwilling wife
-- John Sevier, the frontiersman who led raids against the Indians and was named governor of a would-be state the federal government never recognized
-- Andrew Jackson, a brash young lawyer with a fiery temper, who first met Joshua Colter as an opponent in a brawl but soon became a strong ally and loyal friend

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1581821549
• ISBN13: 9781581821543
• Release Date: July 2001
• Publisher: Cumberland House Publishing
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 1.16 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Canebrake Men

I was in a camp hunting with a few friends when I noticed the book, not much of a reader I picked it up just for something to do in the quiet of the night. I couldn't put the book down in just two days I read half the book. My wife and daughter were shocked to find that I had read that much of it in that short time, but I had to leave the book behind seeing that the owner had not read it yet. Now I find it is not being published I can not find a copy of it. I have read since then two other books from the Underhill Series and recieved four more for christmas and can't wait to get started on them. I am still looking for the Canebrake Men and it looks like I'll have to wait till the next hunting trip to find out what happens. Very good book very much recommend it to anyone who does not enjoy reading.

An Early American Bildungsroman

Judd has the curious ability to ingest history so that when it is retold in his historical novels, it is expressed with an urgency and a raconteur's sense of the present, which lends his characters credence, both the fictional creations as well as the actual historical figures. This is a tale of a strong frontier lad named Owen Killefer who attempts to track down his sister after she is kidnapped by a crude, homocidal mountain man named Turndale, who wiped out the rest of Killefer's family after they had invited him to share their table. Killefer escapes using his own wits and natural suspicion -- attributes that serve him well throughout the novel, which takes him deep into dangerous Chickamauga territory, roughneck towns, and lone woods, where with the help of Jubal, an escaped slave, he is able to come closer to rescuing his sister Emaline. Occasionally Judd lapses into too-straightforward a relaying of history, but in those moments pure storytelling, you would be hard-pressed to find a writer of historical novels better able to capture the dialects, the smells of rabbit cooking over an open fire, or the scent of breath sweetened with cedar twigs (as well as the angst of fearing for your scalp in the rugged forntier) the way Judd does here.