The books in this section are usually hardcover and in decent shape, though we'll sometimes offer hard-to-find books in lesser condition at a reduced price. Though we often put images of the book with their original dust jackets, the copies here won't always (or even often) have them. If that is important to you, please call ahead or say so in the order comments!
The English tried, the Scots tried, the Negroes tried, but until the brawny Irish put hands to their spades, the Erie Canal was only a tantalizing vision. It was a bold, fighting lot from the old sod that did the impossible to make Clinton's Ditch a triumphant reality.
Sean Kildare's own father died digging through treacherous Montezuma swamp. Only a broth of a boy was Sean when, with stout Irish heart, he carved out a career for himself on the canal, as driver boy of the spruce little freighter Annekje. Stingy Captain Tinklepaugh showed the Irisher how easy it was to leave a driver boy in Albany without a cent. Lefty O'Shaughnessey, the Annekje's mate, saw to a rugged schooling for the young canawler. And the lovable Hogan family showed him affection that melted Sean's young heart.
Cut-throat rivalry between canal-boat crews, the hazards of crumbling dikes, the brawls of rough-and-ready canawlers, give Sean Kildare a rip-roaring setting in which to test his fists; to dream his dream of land in the West. Here was a dream proved more magnificent than his wildest imaginings because of that roaring, rowdy, "impossible" man-made river: the Erie Canal.
—From the dust jacket
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