WIDDER’S LANDING gives readers a view of what life was like on the American frontier from around 1810 to 1815. The major part of the story takes place along the Ohio River on the Kentucky side. It gives one a view of the prejudices of the day and how some people were ostracized by others in the community. It also shows people on both sides of the slavery issue that not too far in the future would lead to the Civil War.

The book follows young Craig Ridgeway, a gunsmith apprentice in eastern Pennsylvania, who loses his job and heads off west across Pennsylvania to Pittsburgh. After a short stop off there he heads down the Ohio on a longboat, becomes ill, and is dropped off at a place everyone calls Widder’s Landing. He is found in the woods by the Widder and is taken in and brought back to health. She is an outcast in the community but they befriend each other and he starts to help her with the farm and little by little she opens up to him.

She dies and she has willed him the land that he had started to farm. Being associated with her he is not looked upon in a good light by the community but several incidents prove to him that he might be a good addition to the area. He falls in love with a young lady from a prominent family and they pick up the lessons on farming that the Widder had started.

The story had a trading trip to New Orleans in it. A gathering of the Kentucky militia to cross the Ohio to end Indian incursions across the river. The War of 1812 occurs and decisions have to be made to fight or to stay on the farm with his growing family. Another trip to New Orleans to fight the British and then home to hopefully live peacefully and to continue gather in crops.

Mr. Price gives us a view of what life must have been like at this time in our history. His description of the farming methods and the crops that were grown are interesting and full of facts that many of us do not have in our knowledge base. He has given us a view of how and what people thought about the major issues of that time and how they reacted to various things that were occurring. Even the tax question is brought up in the book.

I found the book to be enjoyable to read and an easy to read. It is one of those books I wished would not end. An excellent job. ( )

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.

United States History, 19th century, Historical Fiction, Kentucky, War of 1812 ( )