James Fenimore Cooper

The Pioneers; Or, The Sources of the Susquehanna James Fenimore Cooper

The Pioneers; Or, The Sources of the Susquehanna by James Fenimore Cooper

The Pioneers begins with a judge, the Marmaduke Temple, sledding back through the deep Christmas snow of the mountains. He has gone to find his young marriageable daughter Elizabeth from school in New York, and is returning to the city he founded, Templeton, designed by a local architect.

In the opening scenes, the judge and his daughter meet the elderly frontier man, Leatherstocking, who is out hunting with an attractive assistant. The judge shoots a deer that runs nearby but accidentally wounds the young man with Leatherstocking. Dismayed at his own clumsiness, the judge offers the young man to take him to the small settlement and medical care at the local sawmills.

Thus sets in motion an essentially joyous love story between the judge's daughter and the shy but tremendously competent young woodcutter, all framed in a series of vivid scenes involving the largely comic characters that inhabit the town. The focus on town life and town "guys" reminded me of Thomas Hardy's first humorous novel, Under The Greenwood Tree.