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Summary
Summary
Gary Paulsen introduces readers to Charley Goddard in his latest novel, Soldier's Heart. Charley goes to war a boy, and returns a changed man, crippled by what he has seen. In this captivating tale Paulsen vividly shows readers the turmoil of war through one boy's eyes and one boy's heart, and gives a voice to all the anonymous young men who fought in the Civil War.
Author Notes
Gary Paulsen was born on May 17, 1939 in Minnesota. He was working as a satellite technician for an aerospace firm in California when he realized he wanted to be a writer. He left his job and spent the next year in Hollywood as a magazine proofreader. His first book, Special War, was published in 1966. He has written more than 175 books for young adults including Brian's Winter, Winterkill, Harris and Me, Woodsong, Winterdance, The Transall Saga, Soldier's Heart, This Side of Wild, and Guts: The True Stories Behind Hatchet and the Brian Books. Hatchet, Dogsong, and The Winter Room are Newbery Honor Books. He was the recipient of the 1997 Margaret A. Edwards Award for his lifetime achievement in writing for young adults.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 7 Up-Charley Goddard, 15, leaves his Minnesota farm to enlist in the Union army in 1861. An almost festive train ride to the South soon gives way to the harrowing realities of war. Paulsen pulls no punches, rendering the young man's experiences in matter-of-fact prose that accentuates the horror. The third-person narrative sticks to Charley's point of view, relating his immediate sensations and the simple ways he tries to come to terms with the bloodshed. The boy soon faces the inevitability of his awful situation but never loses his fear and confusion. After four major battles, he is badly wounded at Gettysburg. A final chapter shows him at 21, joyless, hopeless, and contemplating suicide. Paulsen's introduction explains that having a "soldier's heart" is the Civil War equivalent of shell shock and post-traumatic stress disorder. Charley's experiences show the devastating effect of war in a touchingly personal way. There are unsensationalized descriptions of violence and chaotic battle scenes, but the most powerful images come from particular details. After one conflict, Charley tearfully positions a dying boy's rifle so that he can kill himself. On another occasion, Charley helps a doctor keep the wounded warm by building a windbreak out of dead bodies. The young man's quiet despair at the end of the book makes it clear that nothing good has come out of Charley's war. The grim violence and bleak resolution may put off some readers, but the novel succeeds as a fiery indictment of war and as a memorable depiction of an individual.-Steven Engelfried, West Linn Public Library, OR (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Addressing the most fundamental themes of life and death, the versatile Paulsen produces a searing antiwar story. He bases his protagonist, Charley Goddard, on an actual Civil War soldier, a 15-year-old from Minnesota who lied about his age and ended up participating in most of the war's major battles. At first Paulsen's Charley is fired up by patriotic slogans and his own naïve excitement; in a rare intrusion into the narrative, the author makes it clear that ending slavery was not the impetus: "Never did they speak of slavery. Just about the wrongheadedness of the Southern `crackers' and how they had to teach Johnny Reb a lesson." But Charley's first battleBull Runimmediately disabuses him of his notions about honor and glory. A few sparely written passages describe the terror of the gunfire and the smoke from the cannons. Interwoven with these descriptions, a brilliant, fast-moving evocation of Charley's thoughts shows the boy's shocked realization of the price of war, his absolute certainty that he will die and his sudden understanding of the complex forces that prevent him from fleeing. Details from the historical record scorch the reader's memory: congressmen bring their families to picnic and watch the fighting that first day at Bull Run; soldiers pile the bodies of the dead into a five-foot-high wall to protect themselves from a winter wind. By the time Charley is finally struck down, at Gettysburg, he has seen it all: "At last he was right, at last he was done, at last he was dead." He is not in fact dead, but a victim of "soldier's heart," defined in an eloquent foreword as a contemporaneous term for what is now called post-traumatic stress disorder. Paulsen wages his own campaign for the audience's hearts and minds strategically and with great success. Elsewhere, as in The Rifle, he has told stories in service to a message; here the message follows from the story ineluctably. Charley comes across fully human, both his vulnerabilities and strengths becoming more pronounced as the novel progresses. Warfare, too, emerges complexly-while a lesser writer might attempt to teach readers to shun war by dint of the protagonist's profound disgust, Paulsen compounds the horrors of the battlefield by demonstrating how they trigger Charley's own bloodlust. Charley cannot recover from his years of war; in a smaller but more hopeful way, neither may the audience. Paulsen's storytelling is so psychologically true that readers will feel they have lived through Charley's experiences. Ages 12-up. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Intermediate, Older) The level of realism conveyed in this brief but powerful novel is rarely seen in children's books about the Civil War. The book is based on the life of Charley Goddard of the First Minnesota Volunteers, who lies about his age and joins the Union army at the age of fifteen. His evolution from young boy seeking adventure to battle-weary veteran is tracked from his first military engagement at Manassas until he is finally wounded at Gettysburg. Paulsen hits hard; he protects his readers neither from the brutalities of the engagements nor from their excruciating aftermath. He tells of Charley drinking water from a brook turned pink with the blood of the wounded, describes the terror that the soldiers felt as they faced a volley of bullets from a line of rebels a few yards ahead, and shows Charley picking his way over fields covered with bloated, maggot-covered bodies. Perhaps the most fascinating and horrific passages are those in which he describes the adrenalin-charged Charley finding, in the midst of the battle, a perverse pleasure in the slaughter: ""He wanted to kill them. He wanted to catch them and run his bayonet through them and kill them. All of them. Stick and jab and shoot them and murder them and kill them all..."" As we learn in an author's note, Charley survives the war but comes home wounded in body and spirit to die in his mid-twenties. The title, Paulsen explains in his foreword, is the term used after the Civil War for the damage done to the human psyche by such experiences-now called post-traumatic stress disorder. The author's extensive research is evident in the richness of the details he provides, but what makes this novel so effective, and places it worlds apart from novels by the likes of G. Clifton Wisler or Patricia Beatty, is the unremitting focus on the trauma caused by war. n.v. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
The nightmare of the Civil War comes to the page in this novel from Paulsen (The Transall Saga, p. 741, etc.), based on the real-life experiences of a young enlistee. Charley Goddard, a hard-working, sweet-tempered Minnesota farm boy, can't wait to sign up when the call comes for men to defend the Union. But the devoted son and brother who looks forward to sending home the $11 a month he earns for his soldiering is not prepared for the inedible food, ill-fitting uniform, or the dysentery he experiences just while training. The passages on the battles of Bull Run and Gettysburg areas they should bedisconcerting, even upsetting, in the unflinching portrayal of the bloodshed and savagery of war. What is truly remarkable is Paulsen's portrayal of Charley, who is transformed from an innocent boy into a seasoned--but not hardened or embittered--soldier. Most haunting of all, more than the fiery skirmishes themselves, is the final picture of Charley, so shaken and drained from the experience that the only peace he can envision lies within suicide. An author's note tells of Charley's true fatedead at 23 from the psychological and physical ravages of war. (maps, not seen, bibliography) (Fiction. 10-14)
Booklist Review
Gr. 5^-8. Paulsen neither glorifies war nor sentimentalizes the soldier's experience in this fictional narrative based on the story of a real Union soldier fighting during the Civil War. Although Charley was just 15 years old when the war began, he listened when folks said it would all be over in a month or two and "if a man didn't step right along he'd miss the whole thing." This plainspoken novel follows Charley and the Minnesota Volunteers through training, camp life, and four battles, beginning with First Manassas and ending with Gettysburg. Wounded, Charley is finally sent home. His body begins to mend, but he still suffers from "soldier's heart," which Paulsen explains was the term used in the 1860s for the condition later known during World War I as shell shock, during World War II as battle fatigue, and today as post-traumatic stress disorder. The novel's spare, simple language makes the book accessible; the vivid visual images of brutality and death on the battlefield make it compelling. Compressing six years of Charley's life into just over 100 pages seems to speed up the time frame too much, however many individual scenes are memorable, and Charlie's evolution from eager enlistee to war-weary trooper will give readers something to ponder. Middle-school teachers will certainly want to consider this novel for their Civil War units, along with the Read-alikes selections listed on the opposite page. --Carolyn Phelan