The Daring Trader

 

Kim Crawford is a first-class investigative reporter and researcher with a wonderfully clear writing style. He uses all those talents to bring to life a fascinating but previously untold world of fur traders, Indians, and British and American soldiers plying the Michigan wilderness in the early 1800s. Crawford fills a gaping hole in Michigan history by documenting the eventful life of Jacob Smith, an adventurer, entrepreneur, Indian interpreter and American spy, and the first white settler of what is now Flint.

—Lawrence R. Gustin, author, Billy Durant: Creator of General Motors and David Buick’s Marvelous Motor Car: The Men and the Automobile That Launched General Motors

 

 Crawford digs deeply into little-used archival sources to illuminate an important era in Michigan’s history as the frontier of a burgeoning United States of America. The Daring Trader adds tremendously to the literature of the fur trade and the War of 1812.

—David Lee Poremba, author and book reviewer