THREE RIVERS SOUTH BY EIFERT: A REVIEW

In the new novel, Three Rivers South, a Tale of Young Abe Lincoln, Virginia S. Eifert, editor of The Living Museum, has written a story based on Abraham Lincoln’s famous flatboat trip in the spring of the year, 1831. Into the fabric of fiction, Mrs. Eifert has woven the few known facts of this obscure period in Lincoln’s life, and has created a narrative of adventure down three rivers of Mid-America.

These three streams are the Sangamon, the Illinois, and the Mississippi. The tale begins with young Abe and his kinsmen building a flatboat at Sangamo Town because their employer had neglected to procure a boat at the specified time in order to haul a load of corn and pork down to New Orleans. The story covers the month occupied in building the boat, the month enroute down the flooding rivers to the rowdy, elegant city of New Orleans, where the three spent a month exploring the city before returning to the Illinois country where Abe had a job at New Salem.

Three Rivers South has been capably and dramatically illustrated by one of America’s foremost artists, Thomas Hart Benton. It was published in September by Dodd, Mead and Company, New York, and is priced at $2.95. It may be obtained from your local book shop and from the Book Department of the Illinois State Museum.