Simon Kenton was born in Virginia, the son of a poor tenant farmer. Even as a boy he was meant for the wilderness region rather than the “civilized” coastal region. He was a born frontiersman.
The woods and slopes of Bull Run Mountain were his only school. There he and his brothers and sisters played as children. There as a growing boy he hunted to provide his family with meat and learned his first lessons in woodcraft. There he developed the strength that later helped him to endure hardships and torture at the hands of Indians.
Simon was always a friendly boy, but he preferred the forest to society, and this preference never left him. He was happier hunting or roaming the woods than he was farming. He was happier camping out with his blacksmith friend, Paul Long, than he was staying at home in the warm, snug cabin.
It was Paul who made Simon his first hunting weapons, a bow and arrows, and who taught him how to use them. It was also Paul who showed him how to make a lean-to when they were caught in a storm one night.
Simon owed much to Paul Long and others like him, who could tell about life on the frontier. He listened avidly to what they said, absorbing the lore of the woods just as eagerly as his brother Mark absorbed the content of books. Mark learned from books and became an agent for their landlord, Mr. Graham, but Simon had no interest in books. He was content to learn from the wilderness.
With Yeager and another companion, Simon made his first attempt to reach Kentucky. How they failed, how Simon finally succeeded in reaching Kentucky, and what befell him there, make up a large part of this swiftly moving and exciting story.
Although Simon Kenton is less well known today than his friends George Rogers Clark and Daniel Boone, he was just as important in Kentucky’s history. He served both as a guide for newcomers and as a watchdog against the Indians. Without him the Kentucky settlements might well have been wiped out.
In Simon Kenton Katherine E. Wilke has written a stirring companion-piece to her popular George Rogers Clark. She has also presented a realistic portrait of one of the frontier’s most colorful figures. 

From the dust jacket