Daniel's Walk - Hardcover

Spooner, Michael

3.46

41 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805067507 ISBN 13: 9780805067507

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR), 2001

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I knelt down by one of the grizzly's tracks. It was larger than my hand where his pads had pushed the mud out wide. I pressed my palm into the hollow of his track and stretched my fingers out to touch his claw marks one by one. My scalp tingled.
"Sure was a big one, wasn't he?"
I spun around and something knocked me flat on my stomach. Before I could roll over, a heavy knee pinned my shoulder to the ground and a hard hand yanked my head back by the hair.
"It's me again, white boy," breathed Haggard in my ear. "Don't say you're not glad to see me." --From Daniel's Walk

"Your daddy's in trouble, boy," said the Voice.

Daniel's father is an experienced trapper who knows the Rocky Mountains. So what could have happened to him? Yet Daniel is haunted by the Voice and its message. He decides to leave his home in Missouri to search for his pa.

But it is 1844 and the West is a wilderness. Trouble lurks all along the Oregon Trail, and trouble finds Daniel right away. One stormy night he sees a frightening, scar-faced man stealing horses--and the horse thief sees him, too. Daniel barely escapes being shot. He joins a wagon train headed west, but for him there is no safety in numbers. As surely as he knows that his father is in danger, he knows that the scar-faced man will try to kill him again.

Slowly Daniel comes to understand that he and his father are not the only ones in danger. There are some who will prosper from the westward expansion, but many more-white and Indian alike-will suffer as their land and their lives are destroyed.

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About the Author:

Michael Spooner writes both poetry and prose for children. He is the author of A Moon in Your Lunchbox and is the director of the Utah State University Press. He lives with his family in Logan, Utah.

From School Library Journal:

Gr 6-8-When Daniel LeBlanc hears a Voice in the night warning him that his father, a widowed French trapper, is in trouble, he sets off along the Oregon Trail in search of him. It's 1844, and the 14-year-old's quest clearly conveys the extreme difficulties encountered by those who attempted to settle the American West. Daniel walks over 1000 miles, is shot at, cut with a knife, beaten, half-starved, kidnapped, and nearly sold into slavery to the Utes. He is attacked by a dangerous scar-faced man who turns out to be his uncle and who shoots Daniel's father shortly after the boy finds him. Before his death, however, his father tells Daniel that he detests the white men for their treatment of Native Americans, that he has been helping them, and that he has married an Indian woman. Daniel realizes that the West is not the barren place he has been taught in school, and returns to his aunt's Missouri farm. While the author nicely conveys the drudgery and hardship of Daniel's trip, the plot is confusing and the characters are difficult to keep straight. A concluding note states the author's intent to depict history more realistically, showing the enormous price of white settlement of the West. Too bad the story doesn't show this more clearly through the characters and their actions, rather than having the author tell readers at the end of the book.

Connie Tyrrell Burns, Mahoney Middle School, South Portland, ME

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