• Age: 10 to 14
• Grade: 5 to 9

In this novel by John Wilson, Nate MacGregor knows he must fight for his Southern homeland in the Civil War. Meanwhile, his cousin Walt in Canada West fears that due to the seizure of a Confederate ship with British envoys on board, Britain and her colonies could be drawn into the war -- on the side of the Confederate South, and slavery. Walt believes slavery is wrong. He could never fight in defense of it. Nate and Walt have never met, but as a country descends into chaos, a runaway slave named Sunday is about to change the cousins' lives forever.

John Wilson was born in 1951 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He did his early growing up on the Island of Skye and in Paisley, near Glasgow. From 1969 to 1974, he attended the University of St. Andrews where he took an Honours B.Sc.. in Geology and never played golf once. He took a position with the Geological Survey of Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). In his two years there, he mapped rocks, dodged land mines and watched the country sink ever deeper into civil war. Shortly before he was due to be called into the army, John retreated back to Britain on his way to the safety of Canada. He settled on Calgary where geology was booming and the only danger was freezing to death in January. In 1979, he moved to Edmonton to take up a post with the Alberta Geological Survey. In 1988 he sold a feature article to the Globe and Mail. This fueled a smouldering mid-life crisis and he took up freelance writing full-time. With some success, John mined the experiences of his travels for articles, journalism and photo essays. He even began to express himself poetically and, with a young family, began writing children's stories. He moved to Nanaimo and then Lantzville on Vancouver Island. John has been widely published by a number of Canadian presses, with his acolades including a shortlisting for the Governor General’s Award.

John Wilson's profile page

[T]he story offers a fresh take on the conflict - the idea of Canada as a refuge for fugitive slaves and the irony of how it was nearly drawn into the war on the side of the South.

School Library Journal