Blackwater Ben (Fesler-Lampert Minnesota Heritage)

Nowhere in the book description or reviews was it mentioned that there would be dead bodies bludgeoned and/or decapitated. I never would've purchased this if I'd have known. Referring to pgs 73-74 & 126-127.

It was very specific and mr.Durbin did a lot of research so it would make sense to the reader. I loved it.

Blackwater Ben is a great book to introduce young people to life in a lumber camp. The book is well researched, and the effort is clearly visible in the story. Readers will become familiar with the lumber camp atmosphere and conversant in lumberjack lingo. As usual, Durbin does an excellent job of weaving a story out of forgotten history lived by our ancestors. I highly recommend this book to readers of all ages - kids through adults.

When Ben's father leaves for the logging camp, Ben joins him, working as a cooks assistant. He quickly learns the importance and value of hard work. Overall, this was a pretty good read. It was fast faced and moved nicely. I think pre-teens and young teenage boys will really enjoy this book, and perhaps learn for themselves the value of hard work.

For Ben, being able to get out of going to school is like a dream come true. School was such a waste of time after all, and now, at last, he can be with his father and work in a logging camp. It was hard to leave Mrs. Wilson. She had taken care of him since his mother died and they were close friends. Still, he was now almost grown up and ready for a change.What Ben wasn't ready for was the work itself. It was grueling. He had to labor such long hours and his father was a hard taskmaster with exacting rules that must never be broken. After a sticky accident involving a lot of spilled molasses, Ben's father fired the other cook's helper or "cookee" who worked in the camp. So now it was just Ben and his father who had to feed the always hungry lumberjacks three times a day, seven days a week. Ben couldn't help hoping that his father would hire someone else soon before more "jacks" arrived. If he didn't, Ben feared he wasn't going to be getting much sleep. No sooner had he finished cleaning a stack of dishes and closed his eyes to sleep than he was roused in the freezing dark to start cooking and preparing all over again. Surely there was more to this work than just peeling potatoes and scrubbing pots and pans.Ben gets to know all the characters in the camp, and there are some truly peculiar types among the men who choose to spend the winter working as lumberjacks. There are those fleeing the law and those trying to forget some great sadness in their past. There are also those who simply like the hard work and rugged life of the lumberjack.With humor and sensitivity, author William Durbin takes us into the north woods of Minnesota at the end of the nineteenth century. Through Ben's young and impressionable eyes Durbin shows us the very hard life found in a lumberjack camp, while at the same time sharing Ben's own journey from boyhood into young adulthood. Ben learns a great deal about the man who is his father and the young woman who was his mother and, in the process, discovers what his own strengths and weaknesses are. It is difficult not to laugh at some of the outrageous behavior shown by the lumberjacks and to marvel at their courage and determination to get the job done no matter what.BLACKWATER BEN is an interesting and highly enjoyable book about a little known, yet important part of American history. --- Reviewed by Marya Jansen-Gruber (...)

This book is a wonderful historical fiction about a boy going to work with his father and getting out of school, every kids dream of course. I read it over the summer and finished it in three days it was so good!