Beginning life as a shadowy Indian trail, the road became the means by which almost everything made its way to the Old Southwest as European and American explorers arrived.

From the pioneers journeying south after the Revolutionary War through to the 1830s, Davis uses the Natchez Trace to weave a history of life in the Old Southwest. 

The danger and adversity faced on the Natchez Trace shaped the communities as much as the education, religion and enlightenment that radiated from it.

In A Way Through the Wilderness, William C. Davis uses the everyday experiences and daily struggles travellers and settlers to make a significant contribution to our understanding of the Old South West and those who inhabited it.