vital

This story is something vital, but very tragic. The main character decides to travel from New York to northwestern Canada to see her mother, who sent her to New York twenty years ago. She falls in love with a local catcher, and then an evil fur trader tries to intervene.

Frank Merriwell is the perfect protagonist. He leads a healthy lifestyle, courageous and cheerful. Frank just radiates vital energy. Merriwell excelled at football, baseball, crew, and track at Yale while solving mysteries and righting wrongs. The book is written in a simple form, it is easy to read, thanks to all understandable slang.

Inspired by accusations of venality leveled at the men who captured Major Andre (Benedict Arnold’s co-conspirator, executed for espionage in 1780), Cooper’s novel centers on Harry Birch, a common man wrongly suspected by well-born Patriots of being a spy for the British. Even George Washington, who supports Birch, misreads the man, and when Washington offers him payment for information vital to the...