Description

Complete collection of works of J.F. Cooper

The Leatherstocking Tales is a complex and adventure-packed trip into the lush and unpredictable wilderness of 18th Century America. The thread which ties the five books together is the life story of a rugged and untamable hunter, Indian fighter and American scout for the British military.

The Deerslayer takes place on Otsego Lake, ... Read Morethe story brings the young hunter, Nathaniel Bumppo, and his Delaware brother, Chingachgook, to the lake to rescue Chingachgook's bride-to-be from a Iroquois war party. They enlist themselves in a bloody battle to protect a family of settlers from the Iroquois, and the resulting scenes are dramatic and suspenseful, as loves and scalps are won and lost.


The Last of The Mohicans is the universal favorite and best known of the series. Cooper builds the story around the historic massacre at Fort William Henry on the shores of Lake George. Natty Bumppo, now in his thirties and known by his Indian name of Hawkeye, joins forces with Chingachgook and Chingachgook's son Uncas to save the lives of the daughters of the fort's commanding officer.


In The Pathfinder treachery drives the story as an officer of a Scottish regiment sells his loyalty to the French and their Indian sympathizers. Cooper displays a penchant for mystery and intrigue as the characters struggle to identify the traitor and avoid the capture of their island stronghold.

The Pioneers returns to the site of The Deerslayer to portray an era in which the world of the game-rich forests and free roaming hunters and Indian tribes has been supplanted by property rights, civil law and a market economy. With a heavy helping of nostalgia, Cooper devotes the book to a fascinating description of the living circumstances and activities of the Americans who built the frontier towns and who made the world of the rootless longhunters obsolete.

In The Prairie, we find Hawkeye removed to the uncharted territory which would become Wyoming and the Dakotas. Having fled the relentless sound of axes hewing down his beloved forests in the east, the Leatherstocking is now in his eighties and has isolated himself in the land of the Pawnee, the Sioux and countless herds of buffalo.