Price, Eddie. Widder’s Landing: Life & Love on the
Kentucky Frontier. Mosley, Missouri: Acclaim Press, 2012. ISBN
9788-1-935001-99-7 (alk. Paper) 1-935001-99-X (alk.paper) Harback: $26.95.
Craig Ridgway leaves his well-educated home at the age of
fifteen because he cannot imagine being in school another year. He moves from
Philadelphia to Lancaster where he apprentices himself to the master-gunsmith
Jakob Wetzel. When Jakob dies in January of 1811, twenty-year-old Craig loses
his mentor. Grieving Wetzel’s death and the end of his job and his home, he
decides to move west to Pittsburg.
There he stokes coal in one of the town’s new foundries. Craig
needs the wide open spaces he fell in love with as he made his way over the
mountains of Pennsylvania in the snows of January. He moves on down to the Ohio
River to the rich farmlands of Kentucky. He disembarks at Widder’s Landing
deathly ill with pneumonia. The Widder nurses him back to health exacting his promise
to continue through the planting and harvesting seasons. So starts ten months
of back breaking labor. Craig has much to glean from one of Cotton Bend’s
infamous outcasts. He can do little more
than notice, Mary, the beautiful daughter of the neighbor whom the Widder
curses.
Setting the life and love on the Kentucky frontier in the
years 1811 to 1814 provides a full time in American history. The years of initial
statehood for Kentucky, Haley’s Comet, the New Madrid Earthquakes, and the War
of 1812 provide the backdrop where Craig, wins and loses, and hopes to win
again. In the process, he grows to love the land and its people. Farming suits
his restless spirit. Catherine McDonnell suits his tender spirit. Life and love
rest on a few hundred acres on the edge of the Ohio River. The small town of
Cottonwood Bend bears intentional resemblance to the small town of Cloverdale
in Breckenridge County.
Price’s vivid descriptions draw on all the senses and paint
a vivid picture of a vivid time. His characters are each unique and will continue
with the reader long after the 586 pages have flown by, like the great flocks
of geese and passenger pigeons that show the change of seasons on this edge of
the frontier. The characterizations are all well-rounded as the author develops
them in the ways they relate to one another, and to the times in which they
live.
Eddie Price’s love of history and the scope of his research
will cause the reader to want Price to have been their history teacher when
they studied the Great Westward Expansion, The War of 1812, Andrew Stonewall
Jackson, crops of Kentucky, and the mighty river systems that were the first
roadways of America. Starting with a real farmhouse built in 1802 on the
western edge of Breckenridge County, Price helps us visualize, taste, smell,
hear and feel “What stories this old house could tell!” His research is
well-grounded and presented in the Introduction and Acknowledgements. This book
makes history come alive.
Readers will match Price’s book with renowned epic
novels like Ken Follett’s Pillars of the
Earth, Morgan Llywelyn’s Brian Boru,
or Mary Renault’s epic historical novels of the 1960’s. The reader will come
away not only with a book they will need to share and read again, but one that
will stand the test of time, and teach more history than one could understand
any other way.
I received a .pdf copy of Widders' Landing from Readers Favorite for my unbiased review.
Chapman, Vannetta.
A Simple Amish Christmas. Abingdon
Press, 2010. ISBN: 1426710666 Rated G – Adults and Young Adult 
“Not your
average” Amish novel. Chapman incorporates not only her knowledge of all things
Amish, but of human nature and love whether found in caring for young cancer
patients in a modern hospital, but in a simple farm house where a difficult
birth calls on bravery and gentleness.
