Peter Loon

Van Reid's latest is “sure to enlarge his circle of admirers.”

–The Baltimore Sun

“Reid's one-man campaign to resurrect the eighteenth-and nineteenth-century novel is a campaign well worth enlisting in. Don't miss
Peter Loon.”

–Kirkus Reviews
(starred review)

“Reid has an excellent sense of dramatic situation, draws shrewd characters, and makes good use of suspense. Writing with power, restraint, and light comic touch, he keeps a surprise till the last.”

–Booklist
(starred review)

“Hopeful. . . a gentle and engaging reminder that America is more than a nation of individuals; it is also a nation of ideas.”

–Bangor Daily News

Also by Van Reid

CORDELIA UNDERWOOD

—
or
—

The Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League

MOLLIE PEER

—
or
—

The Underground Adventure of the Moosepath League

MRS. ROBERTO

—
or
—

The Widowy Worries of the Moosepath League

FIDDLER'S GREEN

—
or
—

A Wedding, a Ball, and the Singular Adventures of Sundry Moss

MOSS FARM

—
or
—

The Mysterious Missives of the Moosepath League

DANIEL PLAINWAY

—
or
—

The Holiday Haunting of the Moosepath League

Van Reid

PETER LOON

Camden, Maine

Published by Down East Books

An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

www.rowman.com

Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SEll 4AB, United Kingdom

Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

Copyright © 2002 by Van Reid

New paperback published by Down East Books, 2016

All rights reserved
. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Reid, Van.

     Peter Loon : a novel / Van Reid.

         p. cm.

1. Frontier and pioneer life—Fiction. 2. Land settlement—Fiction. 3. Young men—Fiction. 4. Maine—History—1775-1865—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3568.E47697 P47 2002

813/.54—dc21

2002512629

ISBN 0-670-03052-X (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-60893-530-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-60893-531-4 (electronic)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

TO HUNTER AND MARY

My heart, my love
,

my always!

CHAPTER 1.
How Ezekiel Peter Black Came to Sheepscott Great Pond and How His Young Daughter Was Courted
.

CHAPTER 2.
Of Rosemund Loon's Strangeness, and Silas Loon's Death, and How Their Son Peter Was Sent in Search of an Uncle “By Marriage
.”

CHAPTER 3.
Of Peter Loon's First Night in the Forest
.

CHAPTER 4.
How Peter Loon Conjured Himself from a Felled Buck, and How He Met Two Woodsmen and a Parson
.

CHAPTER 5.
How Peter Fell in with Parson Leach
.

CHAPTER 6.
Of the March to Plymouth Gore, and of the Place They Went Instead
.

CHAPTER 7.
How Peter Loon and Parson Leach Were Received at the Ale Wife's Tavern, Who They Met, and What They Learned There
.

CHAPTER 8.
Concerning a Conversation on the Beach, and the Consequences of Mr. Tillage's Peep of Heaven
.

CHAPTER 9.
Concerning Antinomianism and Other Matters
.

CHAPTER 10.
Of the Road to New Milford, Unexpected Meetings, and How a Peaceful Man Might Be Driven to Anger
.

CHAPTER 11.
Concerning a Change in Plans, a Parting of the Ways, as Well as an Introduction to the Busy Abode of Captain Clayden as Governed by Mrs. Magnamous
.

CHAPTER 12.
Concerning an Interview with Captain Clayden
.

CHAPTER 13.
How Peter Spent His First Night on Clayden Point, and How He Was Perceived by Young Women There
.

CHAPTER 14.
Of What It Meant to
Pique-Nique
and the Inevitability of Certain Failures
.