From his own novels Van Every lifts fragments, incidents, descriptions, personalities (most of them fictional but typical) and weaves the whole into a rich canvas of the background of living in this country 180 years ago. It has color and drama and story; it is often confusing for the same characters appear and reappear, not always in the same order. But it is a novel effort which gives piecemeal a portrait of our country when it began to pushwest from Pittsburgh.