Blackwater Ben

According to thirteen-year-old Ben Wards father, lumberjacks look forward to two things: mealtime and springtime. In the winter of 1898, Ben leaves school for a job as a cooks assistant to his father at the Blackwater Logging Camp. As Ben spends long hours peeling potatoes and frying flapjacks, he dreams of working in the woods with the other men, felling trees, driving a team, and skidding timber. While enduring a long, cold winter in a camp filled with outlandish characters, as well as an orphan boy named Nevers, Ben comes to understand himself and his familys past. Peppered throughout with heart and humorand including a glossary and afterword with facts about loggingBlackwater Ben paints a vivid picture of the north woods of Minnesota at the end of the nineteenth century.