The settling of southern Kentucky and middle Tennessee from pre-Revolutionary times to the beginning of the nineteenth century is described in everyday detail by Harriette Arnow, the author of The Dollmaker. “It is the art of pioneering rather than the acts of individuals in the westward movement that gives backbone to this book,” wrote historian Thomas D. Clark in the New York Times Book Review. “The author takes her reader along the early trails, onto the land, into the cabins, and even into the private lives of the people.” Seedtime on the Cumberland won the 1961 Award of Merit from the American Association of State and Local History.