I should have paid more attention when I picked this up at at the bookstore. "A book that can be enjoyed by all ages" generally means it was written for children.

And it was. In many parts this reads like Theodore Roosevelt fanfic. You know the type: Theodore and the Maine woodsman stride forth, lantern-jawed, while their city-bred cousins cower and succumb to bug bites. Every word that Roosevelt says is well-considered, an adage for the history books. The hackles of my cynicism rose on every page.

After about a hundred pages or so, though, I stopped fighting it and started to enjoy the book for what it was: the tale of a wilderness trek through a long-gone Northeast. In that regard, it works well.

I would love to see an adult version of this tale, perhaps with enough detail to double as a woodsman-howto. Something like Herzog's Happy People: A Year in the Taiga. ( )