Numbering All the Bones - Hardcover

Rinaldi, Ann

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786805331 ISBN 13: 9780786805334

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2002

Synopsis

Family and freedom are intertwined in this haunting work of historical fiction about a young girl grappling with her past, present, and future in the aftermath of the Civil War.

It is 1864. The Civil War is at an end, but for thirteen-year-old Eulinda, it is the most difficult time of her life. Her younger brother, falsely accused of stealing, has been sold. Then her older brother Neddy runs away. And Eulinda is left alone in a household headed by a cruel mistress -- and a master who will not acknowledge that Eulinda is his daughter. Her mettle is additionally tested when she realizes her brother Neddy might be buried in the now-closed Andersonville Prison where soldiers were kept in torturous conditions. With the help of Clara Barton, the eventual founder of the Red Cross, Eulinda must find a way to let go of the skeletons from her past.

With her trademark attention to detail and historical accuracy, Ann Rinaldi weaves a gripping tale of a girl caught between two worlds.

About this title

About the Author

Ann Rinaldi is an award-winning author best known for bringing history vividly to life. A self-made writer and newspaper columnist for twenty-one years, Ms. Rinaldi attributes her interest in history to her son, who enlisted her to take part in historical reenactments up and down the East Coast. She lives with her husband in central New Jersey.

Reviews

Grade 6-8-In the last year of the Civil War, Eulinda, 13, the daughter of a slave and a slave owner, waits for news of her older brother, who ran away to join the Union Army. Neddy carries with him the ruby ring that he stole after their younger brother, Zeke, was framed for the theft, and punished by being sold away. When Eulinda discovers the Andersonville Prison, where Yankee soldiers die daily from starvation and disease, she knows her brother is somewhere inside the walls. After the war ends, she meets up with Clara Barton, and her destiny becomes entwined with giving the soldiers proper burials and ultimately finding the stolen ring. The author's note and bibliographical references provide evidence of sound research to portray the circumstances surrounding the prison where 13,000 Union soldiers died. While the setting is compelling, the characters themselves never quite draw readers into the emotional elements of the story. With the exception of Eulinda, who was educated in secret, the black characters speak in heavy dialects reminiscent of Gone with the Wind. Also, confusion regarding factual accuracy occurs when Eulinda relates how her mother deliberately infected the slave-owner's cruel wife with cholera by slobbering all over her, an unlikely way for the disease to be transmitted. However, the story may interest readers who want to find out more about the prison that was considered by many to be a death camp on American soil.
Farida S. Dowler, formerly at Bellevue Regional Library, WA
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 7-10. The fiction seems purposive in this Civil War story. It's the history that's most compelling, told from the viewpoint of Eulinda, 13 years old in 1864, a house slave on a plantation just a mile away from Andersonville Prison in southwest Georgia. Like Paul in Mildred Taylor's The Land (2001), Eulinda is the child of the white master and a black slave. As the Civil War is ending, she goes to the prison in search of her brother, who had run away to join the Yankee army but has chosen to die rather than return to bondage. She witnesses the brutality of the death camp where 13,000 Yankee prisoners perish, and after the war, she helps Clara Barton and others clean up the cemetery and honor the dead. Through her work, Eulinda also frees herself, but the brutal legacy of slavery is always there, in the continuing bigotry toward "niggers" and the wrenching family separation. A haunting theme for discussion is the role of the local people who know nothing, do nothing, about the death camp where they live. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0786805331
• ISBN 13: 9780786805334
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 170