The Last of the Mohicans
By James Fenimore Cooper

My father recommended this novel to me—and he's not usually a fiction reader. He likes a good old nonfiction account of a battle. I've dog-eared pages throughout the book, especially Cooper's passages describing wilderness. He was writing about America when his father was born, about the frontier, the settlers, and the French and Indian War; his writing is naturalistic and captures a specific time in U.S. history. I want to read The Deerslayer and the rest of Cooper's books. I think his work is the first step in the development of the American novel.