Description
           The Doom Trail (1921), was the first story written by Arthur D. Howden Smith regarding characters from the Ormerod family; the second being Beyond the Sunset (1922) and the third was Porto Bello Gold (1924), a prequel to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. And finally there was A Manifest Destiny (1926).
He wrote “The Doom Trail” and its sequel “Beyond the Sunset”, about the adventures of Harry Ormerod, an 18th-century English exile, in the frontier of Colonial North America at the Iroquois country where a fierce struggle is waged with French agents out of Canada for control of the fur trade.
Smith was a great admirer of Robert Louis Stevenson. In Porto Bello Gold (1924), a prequel to Treasure Island – written with the permission of Robert Louis Stevenson’s executor, Lloyd Osbourne – Harry Ormerod’s son Robert goes to sea in the company of such famous pirates as Captain Flint, Long John Silver and Billy Bones and takes part in capturing the treasure which would be recovered in Stevenson’s book. Smith also wrote a sequel to Stevenson’s Kidnapped, Alan Breck Again.
The Ormerod Family saga was continued further in A Manifest Destiny (1926) where Robert Ormerod’s great-grandson takes part in the expeditions of the 19th century adventurer William Walker.
It is hoped that the reader here will certainly enjoy reading of the first of the adventures with this book.