The Cane Brake Men

The final installment in Judd's ( The Border Men ) trilogy about the late 18th-century American frontier is set in Franklin, the territory that eventually became the state of Tennessee. Fourteen-year-old Owen Killefer survives a nighttime ambush by sadistic Redcoat deserter Tom Turndale. Turndale has killed or wounded Killefer's relatives and taken his sister, Emaline, as his captive bride. The balance of the story traces Owen's coming of age during his quest to rescue Emaline from Turndale, who lives among the Chickamauga tribe. In an attempt to supply badly needed background information, Judd has his characters deliver proclamations about every imaginable topic to practically anyone who will listen, as if the American frontier were tamed almost exclusively by curiously verbose semiliterates of outstanding moral fiber--and by the women who loved them. Unfortunately, neither these expository speeches nor the gratuitious epilogue succeed in making sense of a muddled, disjointed storyline that is burdened with too many coincidences and too much tragedy. (July)