xiii, 592 pp. Original blue cloth, orange titles, drum on front cover, orange top page ridge. Map of Mohawk Valley 1775-1783 in blue ink on endpapers. "Drums Along the Mohawk (1936) is a novel by American author Walter D. Edmonds.[1] The story follows the lives of fictional Gil and Lana Martin, settlers in the central Mohawk Valley of the New York frontier during the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783). Frank Bergmann wrote in 2005 that the novel, "as a best-seller and a novel perennially assigned in the state's high schools, has substantially shaped the popular view of the region's pioneer period."[2] The book is peopled with historical persons such as General Nicholas Herkimer, Adam Helmer, descendants of the German immigrants who were the majority residents in the central Mohawk Valley at the time, and William Caldwell. It also features such historical events as the Battle of Oriskany and the Attack on German Flatts (1778). The novel was a commercial and popular success, remaining on the bestseller list for two years.[3][4] In 1939, the book was adapted for a Technicolor feature film of the same name directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda, Claudette Colbert, Edna May Oliver, Ward Bond, and John Carradine. Historian Edward Countryman has argued that, while the film incorporates characters, plot, and dialogue from the novel, it differs profoundly in its portrayal of society in the period of the American Revolution. He made it a mythic triumph of the American cause, rather than suggesting the complexity of the times as had Edmonds.[5] Similarly, Frank Bergmann has written, "Unfortunately the 1939 film directed by John Ford, starring Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert, abandons the historical complexity of the original for the mythic simplification of an all-American Western."[2] The novel is still in print after eight decades.[6]" "This is the story of the forgotten pioneers of the Mohawk Valley during the Revolutionary War. Here Gilbert Martin and his young wife struggled and lived and hoped. Combating hardships almost too great to endure, they helped give to America a legend that still stirs the heart. In the midst of love and hate, life and death, danger and disaster, they stuck to the acres that were theirs and fought a war without ever quite understanding it. Drums along the Mohawk has been an American classic since its original publication."Drums Along the Mohawk (1936) is a novel by American author Walter D. Edmonds which follows the lives of fictional Gil and Lana Martin, settlers in the Mohawk Valley of the New York frontier during the American Revolution. The book is peopled with historical persons such as General Nicholas Herkimer, Adam Helmer, and William Caldwell, and features historical events such as the Battle of Oriskany and the Attack on German Flatts (1778). The novel was a commercial and popular success, remaining on the bestseller list for two years. In 1939, the book was successfully adapted to a Technicolor feature film of the same name directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda, Claudette Colbert, Edna May Oliver, Ward Bond, and John Carradine.
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