Fifteen-year-old Louis Nolette’s journey into the heroic battles of the Union Army begins when he meets up with a Union recruiting agent in New York, who wants to enlist him in the northern “Fighting 69th” Irish Brigade. Though young, the Abenaki Indian from Canada finds good reasons to join.
The war to free the slaves touched his spirit: “How can one man own another? It seems slavery is what the battle ought be about.” Then there was the promise of good pay: enough to buy his mother a horse to carry her heavy loads on the long walk to town, to buy a piece of land to raise his future family.
Money made a good future possible and there was little chance of that; not from the baskets of the black ash trees his mother shared her spirit with. Even her skilled doctoring and birthing didn’t bring much cash, highly sought as she was. “M’Mere, she knows when the need for her is great. She shows up at the door just when some frantic husband, he is about to send for help.”
Those were good reasons, yet it was more than that. A proud uniform would bring to an end the insults. No more would he hear, “Dirty Indian gypsies!”
But the realities of war are not pretty, he learns as he marches to Virginia in the campaigns of 1864. Yet the soldiers in his regiment, not one of them an Indian, become brothers he would give his life for. And along the way he is befriended by Artis, a young Mohawk.
Months later, badly wounded at Reams Station, he calls to his mother before passing out. He awakens days after in a dirty field hospital. But before his leg can be amputated, his beloved M’mere, hearing his whispers through the trees, reaches his side, traveling through four states to do so. Back home, his health regained, he realizes looking across their fields bought with his soldiers’ pay, he never wants to see them turn into killing fields or Rebel camps. “Be seeing you boys soon,” he whispers to the wind.
Celebrated Abenaki author Joseph Bruchac based his story on his own great-grandfather, Louis Bowman. Full of historical detail and a memorable cast of characters, he credits his sister, Marge Bruchac, for her contributions with her always-dogged, careful research.
Before embarking on this book, I wondered how the author would describe the horrors of the Civil War to his intended audience, readers ages 10 and up. However, even as many of Nolette’s comrades die in some of the war’s major battles – Cold Harbor, the Crater, the Bloody Angle, the Wilderness – for the most part he describes them symbolically rather than graphically, leaving us instead with a rich human context of slavery, leadership, and a sense of right and wrong.