Timothy Flint, a Harvard graduate and man of the cloth, was one of several early American writers to describe and interpret western lands, legends, and mores to readers in the East and across the Atlantic Ocean. He turned to writing relatively late in life, after a dissatisfactory stint in the ministry, but his first full-length book, Recollections of the Last Ten Years (1826), was followed by several romantic adventure novels, western histories, and a popular biography of Daniel Boone. During his most prolific writing period he also founded and edited the Western Monthly, a literary magazine in Cincinnati, from 1827 to 1830. He served as coeditor of the Knickerbocker: or New-York Monthly Magazine for several months in 1833-1834 until chronic ill health forced him to resign.

In ill health most of his life and a failure at his first career in the ministry, Flint's intellectual and imaginative talents were ignited by...