The Forest and The Fort

The City in The Dawn

It was a time of wilderness freedom, when some let go of the handclasp of civilization and ventured into an ocean of trees. Of those who did; some prospered, some barely managed, and many died. The Forest And The Fort chronicles the lives of these people against a backdrop of Colonial America during the French and Indian Wars, early Pennsylvania and the Ohio River country.

It is the images that one remembers so vividly; shattered glass on a church's floor, a mighty blacksmith and his dark Irish wife, a little turtle, a conch shell, a voiture and a tomahawk. There is conflict and treachery, and words that are lost. It is the story of mercenary soldiers and impatient settlers,..... of forest and fort.

This is a story of the disinherited and one man's journey from savagery to civilization. Kidnapped by the Shawnees and raised as the son of a fierce tribal Chief, Salathiel Albine, a widow's son, must find his way back to the settlements, - - - and to the Dawn Land. Along the way are unforgettable characters; Captain Ecuyer who is stationed at the besieged Fort Pitt and longs for his Swiss homeland, Edward Hamilton Yates, a dapper lawyer and loyal friend, Jane Sligo and her marriage recorded on slippery elm bark, the enterprising Arthur St. Clair, out to carve a fortune in the New World, and the drunken and doomed Irishman, ONeal.

This all happened long ago, and the early glimpses backward are found in a commonplace book stored for many years in a dusty garret.

Hervey Allen grew up near the forest lands of Pennsylvania, and drew mightily from his experiences there. He was well acquainted with this region, it's rivers and hills, and it's evident in the rich detail throughout these books.

The painting above is "Portrait in Oils of a Young American Scalp" Major Salathiel Albine, "The Bane of the Iroquois" late of Gunnset Hall, Richfield Springs, New York. Painted by Lieut. James Francis of the Royal American Regt. at Fort Pitt 1763, showing Albine as the "Little Turtle", just after his escaping adoption by the Shawnees.

(As realized by Andrew Wyeth)

NEXT:At McKees Rocks

NEXT:Missing Persons and Lost Words

NEXT:Trail of the Ark

BACKto Contents

BACKto The Disinherited Main Page