A Dangerous Promise (Orphan Train Adventures) - Softcover

Nixon, Joan Lowery

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0440219655 ISBN 13: 9780440219651

Publisher: Laurel Leaf, 1995

Synopsis

In 1861, sixteen-year-old Mike Kelly and his friend Todd become Union Army drummer boys, leading to a desperate adventure for Mike, who is wounded and trapped behind enemy lines. Reprint.

About this title

About the Author:

Joan Lowery Nixon was the author of more than 130 books for young readers and was the only four-time winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Best Young Adult Mystery Award. She received the award for The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore, The Séance, The Name of the Game Was Murder, and The Other Side of the Dark, which also won the California Young Reader Medal. Her historical fiction included the award-winning series The Orphan Train Adventures, Orphan Train Children, and Colonial Williamsburg: Young Americans.
From the Hardcover edition.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 4-8-The Civil War is raging and Mike Kelly, 12, who came to the Midwest on an orphan train, runs away from home with his friend Todd to join the Union Army. As musicians in the Second Kansas Infantry, they make a long and difficult march into Missouri, where they encounter General McCulloch's Missouri Guard at the arduous Battle of Wilson's Creek. Mike is wounded and left for dead; Todd is brutally killed. Mike looks on in agony while a man takes an heirloom pocket watch from his friend's body-he'd promised Todd he'd return it to his sister if anything ever happened to him. He is rescued by a Confederate soldier-someone he'd known on the orphan train-and eventually rejoins his regiment and has several adventures and close calls with Confederate sympathizers along the way. His overriding mission, however, is to retrieve Todd's watch. Nixon writes energetically and maintains an aura of adventure and danger. She clearly portrays the horrors of war, and the particular agony of this war. Her characters are finely drawn and multifaceted, the plot is lively, and the details are well chosen. This is history come to life.
Joyce Adams Burner, formerly at Spring Hill Middle School, KS
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Laurel Leaf
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0440219655
• ISBN 13: 9780440219651
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160