Winning the Wilderness
Margaret Hill McCarter
Paperback
(Book Jungle, Aug. 3, 2009)
Winning the Wilderness is a story full of the pioneer spirit that was the backbone of the settlement of the prairie land. Margaret McCarter's works include: The Cottonwood's Story (1903), Cuddy's Baby (1907), Cuddy and Other Stories (1908), In Old Quivira (1908), The Prince of the Prairie: A Story of Kansas (1910), The Peace of the Solomon Valley (1911), A Wall of Men (1912), A Master's Degree (1913), Winning the Wilderness (1914), The Corner Stone (1915), Vanguards of the Plains: A Romance of the Old Santa Fe Trail (1917), The Reclaimers (1918), Paying Mother (1920), Homeland (1922) and Widening Waters (1924). An excerpt reads, "Jean Aydelot, the first of the name in America, driven from France by his family on account of his Huguenot beliefs, had settled in Virginia. He had quickly grasped the American ideals of freedom, the while he affiliated easily with the exclusive English Cavaliers. Something of the wanderlust in his blood, however, kept him from rooting too firmly at once. It happened that when a band of Quaker exiles had sought refuge in Virginia and was about to be driven out by the autocratic Cavaliers, young Aydelot, out of love for a Quaker girl, had championed their cause vehemently. And he was so influential in the settlement that he might have succeeded, but for one family--the wealthy and aristocratic Thaines."