Publisher's Synopsis
THE mountains hem us in. Beyond the mountains lies the world - a turbulent world of storm and struggle and opportunity. But the sturdy Shawangunks lift up their blue barrier and hold it back so that we in little old New Paltz can sleep on beside the drowsy Wallkill almost as we slept two hundred years ago. We love our mountain with its patchwork sides of cultivated fields and woodland and its rugged crown of rocks. It is beautiful in autumn when lines of blazing sumac mark the fence rows and its woods are the color of wine and mahogany; and in winter when the glow of sunrise and the mists that creep up from the lowlands paint its blanket of snow with rose and amethyst. But we love it best in June when the woods are fresh green of early summer and the wind goes billowing through its fields of daisies and yellow ripening grain. It was in June two centuries and a half ago that Catharine DuBois clambered wearily up and down its steep sides and all about her the laurel must have been bursting into bloom. But she had little heart for the beauty of it then, with Baby Jacques pressed close in her arms, for they were captives of the Indians and the story of their rescue is the story of how New Paltz came to be settled by our ancestors. Yes, the stranger must summer and winter our mountain and then he will begin to understand why our peace-loving forefathers tarried on in the valley at its feet for generation after generation with little inclination to drift back into the world outside. For a harsh, cruel world it had been to them for many a long year, driven as they had been from pillar to post and from post to pillar because of their religious belief.
