BLACKWATER BEN
by William Durbin
Wendy Lamb Books
ISBN: 0385729286
Ages 10-up
208 pages

• Read an Excerpt

For Ben, being able to get out of going to school is like a dream come true. School was such a waste of time after all, and now, at last, he can be with his father and work in a logging camp. It was hard to leave Mrs. Wilson. She had taken care of him since his mother died and they were close friends. Still, he was now almost grown up and ready for a change.

What Ben wasn't ready for was the work itself. It was grueling. He had to labor such long hours and his father was a hard taskmaster with exacting rules that must never be broken. After a sticky accident involving a lot of spilled molasses, Ben's father fired the other cook's helper or "cookee" who worked in the camp. So now it was just Ben and his father who had to feed the always hungry lumberjacks three times a day, seven days a week. Ben couldn't help hoping that his father would hire someone else soon before more "jacks" arrived. If he didn't, Ben feared he wasn't going to be getting much sleep. No sooner had he finished cleaning a stack of dishes and closed his eyes to sleep than he was roused in the freezing dark to start cooking and preparing all over again. Surely there was more to this work than just peeling potatoes and scrubbing pots and pans.

Ben gets to know all the characters in the camp, and there are some truly peculiar types among the men who choose to spend the winter working as lumberjacks. There are those fleeing the law and those trying to forget some great sadness in their past. There are also those who simply like the hard work and rugged life of the lumberjack.

With humor and sensitivity, author William Durbin takes us into the north woods of Minnesota at the end of the nineteenth century. Through Ben's young and impressionable eyes Durbin shows us the very hard life found in a lumberjack camp, while at the same time sharing Ben's own journey from boyhood into young adulthood. Ben learns a great deal about the man who is his father and the young woman who was his mother and, in the process, discovers what his own strengths and weaknesses are. It is difficult not to laugh at some of the outrageous behavior shown by the lumberjacks and to marvel at their courage and determination to get the job done no matter what.

BLACKWATER BEN is an interesting and highly enjoyable book about a little known, yet important part of American history.

   --- Reviewed by Marya Jansen-Gruber (mjansengruber@mindspring.com) of Through The Looking Glass Book Review (www.lookingglassreview.com)

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