Anson's Way - Softcover

Gary D. Schmidt is the bestselling author of Okay For Now, the Newbery Honor and Printz Honor book Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, and the Newbery Honor book The Wednesday Wars. He is a professor of English at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Grade 5-9-Six generations of English officers from the Staplyton family have served the Staffordshire Fencibles in support of their monarchs. The proudest day of young Anson Staplyton's life is when he follows his ancestors, arrays himself in full uniform, and becomes drummer boy to the troops his father leads for King George II. But after disembarking in Dublin, their latest port of duty and a center of unrest, the Fencibles find their assignment of keeping the peace something less than glorious. Anson, dreaming of noble battlefield deeds, is stunned when the first action he witnesses is the brutal whipping of Owen Roe Sullivan, a "hedge master" punished for clandestine teaching of Irish history, religion, and language, a high crime in 18th-century Britain. Added to this shock are a military operation that goes horribly, fatally wrong and the sight of Colonel Staplyton kowtowing to a powerful but cruel patron. Soon Anson's boyish fantasies are in tatters, and he begins to feel divided between his sworn duty and his growing respect for Ireland and its people. Anson's search for the right path results in a tense, exciting story peopled with lively characters moving through glorious Irish landscapes, all depicted movingly in this first-rate historical novel.
Starr E. Smith, Marymount University Library, Arlington, VA
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