Blackwater Ben

Thirteen year old Ben Ward is a cooks' helper for his dad at a logging camp in northern Minnesota in the winter of 1898. The camp is called Blackwater Camp, and Ben is kept busy peeling potatoes, washing dishes, hauling lunch to the lumberjacks, and a host of other jobs. What he'd really like to be doing is something more important like hauling the logs from where they are cut to the riverbank where they will be moved downstream when Spring comes. There are several colorful characters at this camp and plenty of lumberjack tales to be told, and pranks to be pulled. Written by William Durbin, this was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award in 2004, and is a nice supplement to the study of logging in Minnesota history.