Daniel Doan, whose books about the White Mountains are premier guides, combines a woodsman's perceptions, a naturalist's eye, and a novelist's craft into a lyrical tale of settlers whose attempt at an impossible independence comes dangerously close to precipitating war between two nations. Jere R. Daniell is Professor of History at Dartmouth College and author of Colonial New Hampshire (1981) and Experiment in Republicanism: New Hampshire Politics and the American Revolution, 1741 - 1794 (1970).