RANGER'S RANSOM

A practiced historian tells a sure fire story about a boy who found himself in a strange situation in the village of Hebron, Mass. during the French and Indian wars. Cass Purdie, whose family had been blacksmiths, was apprenticed to the blacksmith Nat Golden, to pay off his debt to the towns- people- for they had ransomed him from the Abenaki Indians some years after all the Purdie's had been taken captive and all but Cass, killed. Cass's years with the Abenaki had made him almost half Indian. But bound as he was to Hebron, his stint with the troops of Amherst and Rogers was fraught with double motives, and through the campaigns and the victories there's suspense to the last working out of Cass's freedom.