Daniel Boone opens in the 1740s, when Boone is a young boy living with his family in Berks County, Pennsylvania. Dismayed by the increasing population of Berks Country, the Boones in 1751 move to the Yadkin River Valley in North Carolina. Nine years later, Native American raids force Boone and his wife and children to move briefly to Culpeper, Virginia. But they return to the Yadkin River Valley, which remains their home until they move with other settlers through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky.

The narrative vividly describes the dangers and the joys of pioneer life as it follows Boone's series of "long hunts" into Georgia, Florida, and Kentucky; his participation in General William Braddock's unsuccessful wilderness campaign against the French and the Native Americans, as well as the Tennessee campaign against the Cherokee and Lord Dunsmore's expedition down the Ohio River in pursuit of Cornstalk; his role in...