A Boy Against the Boxers

It's the summer of 1900, and fourteen-year-old Eddie Donahue has exactly the life a boy dreams about — running errands through the wild markets of Peking, dodging open sewers, watching Marines march past in their dusty campaign hats. His father trades silk for the American Oriental Trading Company. His mother imports country ham from Kentucky and fights a losing war against two basset hounds on the couch. Life is strange and far from home, but Eddie loves every minute of it.

Then the Boxers come to Peking.

When the Empress Dowager's fragile protection collapses and a coalition of Boxer militants and Imperial soldiers surrounds the International Legation Quarter, Eddie's world shrinks to a few city blocks. The gates close. The guns start. And for the next fifty-five days, everyone inside — diplomats, soldiers, missionaries, merchants, and one American boy who was told to stay put — will fight to survive.

Eddie doesn't stay put. He never does.

He rescues a wounded Marine sergeant with a cowboy pistol from a Peking back alley. He crawls through a sewage moat in the dead of night to reach help. He scavenges silk and herbs to supply a field hospital run by his mother and the future First Lady of the United States. He digs a Civil War-era cannon out of a junk shop and hands it to a gunner who names it Betsey. And when a massive mine blows a barricade sky-high with his father buried inside, it's Boone and Crockett — two floppy-eared basset hounds — who sniff him out of the rubble.

Based on the real events of the Siege of the International Legations, A Boy Against the Boxers is a white-knuckle historical adventure packed with real people, real battles, and real heroism. Lou Hoover really did ride her bicycle through gunfire with a revolver on her hip. Gunner Mitchell really did build a cannon from scraps. Colonel Shiba really did lead a midnight rescue. Eddie Donahue is fiction. The war around him was not.

For readers 10 and up who love fast-paced adventure, military history, and stories about kids who refuse to sit on the sidelines.