Look to the Mountain- Book Feature

I look to the mountains; where will my help come from? My help will come from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.

"Seventy-five years on, Look to the Mountain is still a definitive American novel, offering a captivating glimpse of life at the edges of the original colonies, and the grit and determination of the earliest New Englanders." Barnes and Noble- Overview




You know the feeling. The feeling when you read a book and 5 months later you still think about it all the time and wish you could find another one with a similar atmosphere. I am all about the atmosphere of a book. This book, Look to the Mountain, did not disappoint.

There is something about LeGrand Cannon Jr.'s lovely book. When I think of it, I go instantly to a sun drenched and hazy meadow, to the long river journey,  to the cold, the exhaustion, and the thrill of finding a new home in this land. I go to the hill-set cabin, the old growth forest, and to the characters we meet along the way.

It isn't fast paced and the language can be sort of matter-of-fact but the the story and the world it is conjuring is vivid.

We meet the young Whit Livingston and his soon-to-be wife Melissa when they are still teens in their tiny hometown. After much drama at home, they are married and soon take off into the New Hampshire wilderness to find a place of their own. Braving the wilderness, the couple struggle up the Merrimack river to unsettled land at the foothills of New Hampshire's White Mountains. The reader follows the couple from 1769 to 1776. We spy into the world of an early American settler- how they traverse the wilderness, how they build their house, how they plan their farming and trapping, and how they experience the boiling of far-off war.

This book is a joy for anyone to read to understand what our country looked live on the eve of the revolution. I loved every minute of savoring this book.

If you have history in New England, this book is for you.

This is the first post of what I hope to make a regular series- books that aren't explicitly about genealogy or even the area that I am from, but ones that take me back in time and inspire me. Watch for posts labeled "Book Feature" to stay up to date on the next ones.

What are some books you have found to be useful or interesting in your research?

Love always and happy hunting,
Morgan