"Isn't our dinner ready yet?" asked Mr. Donelson. He peered into the skillet. "What is this—Yorkshire pudding?"

Rachel's lip quivered, "There—there was no bowl to mix the batter in, to make corn pones."

Two big tears slid down Rachel's cheeks. She had felt so grown-up cooking dinner in the woods for the men. This was the first time they had allowed her to come on a surveying trip. It had been a great adventure. And now everything had gone wrong! The fire had been too hot, then too low. She had scorched the meat. Smoke blew in her eyes. She had burned her wrist. Twice she had nearly dropped the skillet in the flames. Then the cornbread had run all over the meat. 

"There, there!" Mr. Donelson said, "You never claimed to be a woodsman. Let's turn this pudding over and make a hoecake."

He showed Rachel how to flip it and cook it till it was crusty brown. He cut three big wedges and served them on pieces of pine bark. Carefully the children bit into the hoecake. Why, it was good!

Rachel smiled gratefully at her kind, clever father. She wanted him to be proud of her. She wished she had paid attention to her cooking lessons instead of longing for adventures with her brothers in the woods. "I'm going to be the best cook on the Banister River," she promised herself.

Rachel did become a good cook and a good housekeeper—but by that time, she was far away from the Banister River, on the Western frontier of Virginia. In 1779, when Rachel was about twelve, her father began to talk of moving to the west. He wanted to move his big household, with eleven children and servants, to the Tennessee country. They would travel by flatboat down the western rivers, floating a thousand miles through the wilderness. All sorts of adventures—with Indians, wild animals, winter weather, hunger—awaiting them. Rachel had always welcomed adventure. But after long months of river travel, when their boat reached the Great Salt Lick in Tennessee, Rachel declared she'd had enough excitement to last a lifetime! She was glad to settle down to be a Tennessee girl.

As beautiful Rachel Donelson, as the General's Lady—the beloved wife of Andrew Jackson—as the mistress of the Hermitage near Nashville, Rachel had many years full of adventure. This book, by a well known Tennessee author of children's books, is an appealing story about the childhood of the little pioneer girl who was to become Tennessee's favorite heroine.

From the dust jacket