Raccoon John Smith: Frontier Kentucky's Most Famous Preacher

John Smith, born on the frontier in 1784 to devout parents, flirted with Deism and skepticism as a young man, but experienced a profound evangelical conversion after his father died. Taken with the teachings of Alexander Campbell, Smith devoted himself to preaching Campbell's restorationist gospel. This biography is wide-ranging, taking us into Smith's family life and his tangles in church politics. Sparks spells out in detail-sometimes too much detail-the fine denominational differences that distinguished Christian families from one another in the 19th century. Sparks's prose is fluid and vigorous: the descriptions of the rural landscape are especially vivid (""the scrawny yellow...love apples"" were ""simple and poor yard decorations""). But Sparks's tendency toward digression quickly grows annoying. The reader could do without the frequent ruminations about Kierkegaard, and the supposition that had A.E. Housman lived in Appalachia, he might have preferred spicewood trees to English Worcestershire trees. Sparks, a Baptist minister, overreaches in his attempts to prove his historian's bona fides; chapters open with unnecessary reflections on historical method. Still, for those interested in Smith's life and times, this study will be welcome.