A Little About... "Rebel Siege" by Jim Kjelgaard

 

A Little About… Rebel Siege

Jim Kjelgaard’s second novel, Rebel Siege, appeared in September 1943 from Holiday House, a full two years after his first novel, Forest Patrol, was published. It was the first of two Kjelgaard novels illustrated by Charles Banks Wilson. The other, The Story of Geronimo, was published by Grosset & Dunlap in 1958. Wilson is most famous for his portraits of Will Rogers, Jim Thorpe, and U.S. House Speaker Carl Albert, which is hanging in Washington D.C.’s National Portrait Gallery.
     While Forest Patrol is like the books Kjelgaard is best known for—animals, boys, and wild places—Rebel Siege is a historical novel about a fourteen-year-old boy, Kinrose McKensie, and his experiences in the American Revolutionary War. Largely set in South Carolina, Rebel Siege, chronicles Kin’s war—including losing his rifle to a British soldier and dealing with his Tory father—all the way to the British surrender at Kings Mountain. Kirkus called it “a well written story of the wilderness fighting of the Revolution” and Proof of the Pudding, ed. by Phyllis Fenner (1957), added Rebel Siege is “[a] very superior story for boys and girls.” Its entertaining premise (like most of Kjelgaard’s young adult novels) is centered on character and place. Rebel Siege is more difficult to find these days, and while it isn’t Kjelgaard’s best work, it is still very much worth reading.
      During the period when Rebel Siege was being written and prepared for publication, Kjelgaard continued writing for the pulps. He made his debut in Adventure—the first of more than forty stories—with “The Duel” in June 1942. He continued publishing, mainly adventure stories, with Argosy, and Westerns in Street & Smith’s Western Story. His final sale (of six) to the legendary Black Mask, “The Man They Couldn’t Break,” appeared in July 1942. He also had a short-short appear in Liberty, which is notable because you can read it here at the Jim Kjelgaard blog.