A Journey through Childhood

Description

In A Journey Through Childhood the author leaves behind Lydia Clark, a young widow, and her husband, George, who disappeared mysteriously. Their ten-year-old eldest son, Orrin, now becomes the centerpiece. He is indentured to Billy Blinn, a pioneer farmer on Willsborough Point whose family embraces him as one of their own children. In return for food, clothing and a home to live in he apprentices as a farmer until he reaches his majority at age twenty-one. The story portrays Orrin within the context of life on The Point, and the daily events that took place there, as well as the impact that events in the broader arena, including the War of 1812, had upon Orrin Clark and the Blinn family.

REVIEW

Written as a sequel to Darcey Hale’s first book (The Long Trek North), A Journey Through Childhood might well become a “prequel” to a third volume in the saga of the Clark family. Her readers will welcome this second book about the Clarks and they will also welcome, if not demand, a third one to meet new characters and their endeavors, challenges, and triumphs all lovingly and skillfully described by Darcey Hale from the trove that family bequeathed to her and to posterity.

H. Nicholas Muller III, Ph.D,, historian

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Over a fifteen-year period Darcey Hale cared for and archived the massive Clark Collection of 51,000 printed materials, 6,000 photographs and 2,000 textiles that she unearthed everywhere on the former Clark family properties. Inspired by these treasures she wrote her first book, The Long Trek North that set the stage for A Journey through Childhood, a sequel. She continues to tell the remarkable story of the Clarks of Willsborough Point as she weaves together the threads of life in the Champlain Valley of New York during the 19th century.