Nigel must choose between entering an orphanage or entering an apprenticeship on a mule train. The APPRENTICESHIP OF NIGEL BLACKTHORN is a coming-of-age story set in the American West of 1853. The story relates the adventures of a thirteen-year-old English boy whose missionary parents came to convert the wild heathens to the way of Christ. Comanches slaughter Reverend John Blackthorn and his family before he preaches one word. Nigel survives by following his mother’s instructions to hide in a hollow tree. Pascal LeBrun, a roaming muleteer, rides to the smoke of the burning wagons to find Nigel, the lone survivor. Plump, lazy, and spoiled, Nigel enters an unwelcome new world–work or starve. He finds survival is the way of life on the prairie. Worse yet, English is a little used third language. Two hundred miles later, when the mule train reaches the first white settlement, Pascal gives Nigel a choice: enter an orphanage, or enter an apprenticeship on the mule train for a piddling wage. Years later, Nigel wonders if the orphanage would have been easier.

No longer a spoiled teenager, 15-year-old Nigel Blackthorn will need his new gained strength and training to survive being kidnapped by the Bannocks It’s Nigel’s third year with Pascal, and the wily mule-train leader heads North in the Spring. Long, grueling days and countless painful lessons have changed the whiny Nigel and often placed the former preacher’s son in danger. Considered an adult by the Cheyenne, he anglicized his Cheyenne name to be called “Blackthorn Wolfe” or Blackie to his friends. When Pascal arranges a trade truce with the northern Bannock, they kidnap Blackie, offering to trade him for a keg of gun powder and lead—items Pascal refuses to sell or trade. “I’ll meet you at Fort Hall in two-weeks,” Blackie calls as the Bannocks carry him away. Can Blackie escape the Bannocks before they realize Pascal won’t trade powder for him? How will he survive alone, unarmed, and on foot to reach Fort Hall, 200-miles away? Has the canny old trader prepared Blackie for his ultimate test – staying alive in the untamed mountain frontier? North in the Spring is the dramatic second story in Frank Kelso’s gritty Coming-of-Age series, The Apprenticeship. If you like your westerns well-researched and richly layered, get your copy now. Buy North in the Spring to journey through the early western frontier today!