Fiction, but based on the activities of a real 19th century Georgia tavern owner who had a predilection for murdering his guests. Young Ben wakes one morning to find his father ""gone off,"" or more likely done in, and himself impressed into hard labor. With his fellow prisoner Amos and the itinerant drover Skinner he makes an escape -- thus proving himself more resourceful than his father, who turns up alive and recovering from his wounds on the estate of the (real) Cherokee Chief Joseph Vann. There's an afterword which makes a plea for greater understanding of the (real) Indians, and the story is satisfactorily scarifying, but once you've seen the inarticulate Ben and his father safely reunited you'll be plumb ready to travel on.