"An arresting, raw, and sensitive account of a remarkable man and an extraordinary life. Told with the robust accuracy of a researcher and the engaging style of a poet, Griffith triumphantly evokes the love and yearning for wilderness buried deep inside the reader."

"A superb study that clears away the fog and mythology of Boone as the pathfinder for civilization, as a settler of virgin territory. At home not in established farmsteads but in endless wilderness tracts, Daniel Firth Griffith's Boone was at heart a storyteller in action of unquenchable wanderlust, always drawn to the next hillside and to the Edenic land beyond. For Boone, the wilderness was home, the journey to the wilderness the true destination. Griffith's use of antebellum sources is deft, offering insightful period context."

"Who was Daniel Boone and why does it matter? Daniel Griffith's sensitive biography of Boone shows him to be a simple man and a political man- reluctantly serving the political community in war and peace, while longing to observe, learn and hunt in the untouched wilderness. These worlds temporarily met on the American frontier, through the conflict with the native tribes who simply occupied that land. Boone was a spearhead for European conquest, though that desire was far from his peaceful heart or intention. Griffith's accomplishment is to provide a serious philosophical reflection on this complex American folk hero, who admired the peoples his displaced."

"For those of us who love and live for wild places, Griffith's account of the life of Daniel Boone elicits both joy and heartache. We are tantalized by images of pristine natural abundance, yet simultaneously dejected as we realize what we've lost. But, we are left inspired-to live lives of integrity, as did Boone-always fair, generous, and faithful to his friends and family, but also to his own passions and compulsions. And, we are left compelled to work toward healing and regenerating this lost Eden-to becoming new natives that build back, rather than extractive pioneers."

"Boone: an Unfinished Portrait surpasses the biography genre’s standard of simply being informative and lands squarely in “edifying.”Griffith carefully and lovingly works his way through the narrow mountain pass of exhorting and honoring the wanderlust heartiness of the pioneers, while still removing any trace of doubt in the reader’s mind of the tragedy of the conquest and displacement of the highly civilized Native people. Griffith puts aside the American legend that has sprung up around the character of Boone. In its place, he unveils a man whose home was far less American as much as it was alone within the woods. Griffith, in his admirable insistence on following the facts, is as keen to expose the true soul of the reader as he is to understand the man Daniel Boone. In the book’s search for discovering where one man’s soul resided, we’re also gifted with a picture of the contemplative life— one of deep connection with nature, a contentment with solitude, an appetite for adventure, and a respect for all peoples. The book invites the reader to lament— the pain of the Native, the tragedy of the consequences of Boone’s way finding, the loss of Man’s intimacy with nature and with the hunt. This lament is not condemning, oppressive, or hopeless. It is beautiful and tragic, and a tale worth telling and worth carrying forward in time with us."

“Griffith dispenses with the trite mythology of Boone’s legend to explore the philosophical underpinnings of the man and his tumultuous, transitional era. The ironies of the life of the frontier woodsman, his joys and tragedies, his accomplishments and setbacks, are deftly examined in this ‘unfinished’ portrait.”

“Daniel Firth Griffith takes the reader through pages of classical antiquity, anthropology, political and economic history, theology, agriculture, geography, American and European literature in search of Daniel Boone. We walk with Boone through the flora and fauna of the new world at its founding period. The author makes Boone’s life and the period alive and vivid widening the aperture on the human condition. An important read and reminder that history isn’t defined by one person, one act, one event, but daily interaction with others, our times, our environment over a lifetime.”