KENTUCKY · 1790s

Big & Little Harpe's Hell on Wilderness Road

The Historical Novel of America's First Serial Killers, by J.B. Fox

The Road

The Wilderness Road ran through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky, the main overland route for settlers pouring west in the last years of the eighteenth century. It was long, thinly watched, and far from any court.

The Brothers

Micajah and Wiley Harpe, remembered as Big Harpe and Little Harpe, worked the Kentucky and Tennessee frontier in the 1790s. They are often called America's first serial killers.

The Frontier

Kentucky became a state in 1792. Outside its few towns, law meant whatever neighbors could raise in a posse, which is the world this novel drops you into.

What This Book Is

A historical novel. It follows the brothers' terror on the frontier; the dialogue and inner lives are the author's.