Kinnery Camp and The House on the River are two of Charlotte Baker's better adventure stories but this, the first of a two volume novel, a story of two boys on a quest for economic security in 1800 and the clearance of their father's reported suicide is a melodrama whose characters unfortunately speak like parrots. From their Virginia tobacco plantation Roy and Jerry Lacey set out on their cousin Ardsley's ship Thunder- bird to collect furs in the Northwest for the China Trade. Jerry gets lost in Brazil. Roy goes on, to be captured by a Northwest Indians and find that Ardsley is a bounder. Then Jerry finds Roy and they agree to hunt Ardsley together...in the next book. Food for thrills if not for thought.