The Redheaded Orphan (Ben and Zack, Bk 3)

In 1864 when his family moves to Bellfield, Minnesota, where his father will be the town minister, twelve-year-old Ben misses his friend Zack, who is now a drummer in the Union Army, but he finds a new friend in an orphan whose parents were killed during an Indian raid.

Gr. 4^-7. In the opening scene of the third book in the Ben and Zack series, a boy named Jamie loses his entire family in an Indian massacre in Minnesota, a place where animosities run deep between settlers and the Sioux. The year is 1864, and Ben Abee and his family have just moved from New York City to Minnesota, where Ben's minister-father has taken the pastorate of a new church. Lonesome for companionship, Ben becomes fast friends with Jamie. Together, they endure erratic mistreatment from their schoolmaster, Mr. Bram. But the most difficult moment for Ben is the discovery that his friend Zack has been killed. The story drags near the end, but the theme of building new friendships, which are strengthened through adversity and forgiveness, is a solid one, as is the validation of the tragic experience of Native Americans as they suffered at the hands of the early settlers. Shelley Townsend-Hudson