Border Iron: 2

by Herbert Best

Only a man who knows the Massachusetts and New York countryside intimately could write so absorbing and exciting a book as Border Iron. The story moves against a glowing and detailed background which completely transports the reader to the time and surroundings in which it takes place. It tells how a very real boy, Tod Randall, and his important black and white sheepdog, Limb, solve a border dispute over iron ore from Massachusetts for a furnace in York Province in the 1740s. Tod is a lonely orphan boy searching for his only living relative, whom he faintly remembers "in a small house surrounded by white lilacs near a harbor full of little sailing ships." During his varied adventures, which are both tragic and funny, he leads a difficult life as an ore-train driver for a bullying deputy sheriff. The climax is a glorious fist fight in which Tod triumphs over the villain of the story, proving himself capable of taking a man's place in the community.

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1945

About the author

Oswald Herbert Best

Reviews

[Manny]

Somewhere around 1967, I was at primary school and I was reading Border Iron. It was kind of slow, and there was all this stuff about the mechanics of iron smelting that I was only moderately interested in. I can't quite remember how, but I got sidetracked. I put the book down, intending to return to it, and I never did. It occasionally bothers me.

Maybe I need to track down a copy and finish this sucker.