• Grade: 7 to 10

Arthur Hercules Slade, whose British cavalry regiment fought in Palestine against the Turks in World War I, was once asked, "What was it like to be in the war?" He answered, "I was everywhere that Jesus was, but I couldn't find him anywhere." Fascinated by the idea of his grandfather charging enemy machine guns with asabre in one hand and his horse's reins in the other, bestselling author Arthur Slade has created a tale of a teenager who finds the true face of war behind the shinyveneer of patriotism, honour and duty.

Megiddo's Shadow is the story ofEdward Bathe, a 16-year-old prairie farm boy who, giddy with the romantic ideals of war and desperate to fight the Huns in France, enlists in 1917. To his disappointment, he is assigned to a horse- training regiment, where the only consolation is Buke, his horse, and Emily, the pretty young nurse he befriends. But when he is sent to fight the Turks in Palestine, Edward learns that what he thought he knew about right and wrong, about heroism and courage, and about God and country, no longer holds true.

Much more than a powerful and shockingly realistic work of historical fiction, Megiddo's Shadow is a poignanttestament to the terrible legacy of war, seen through the eyes of a character with whom readers will instantly connect. An intelligent, provocative and breathtaking read, Megiddo's Shadow affirms Arthur Slade as a literary superstar.

The first volume in ARTHUR SLADE’s Hunchback Assignments series won the prestigious TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award, and the second volume, The Dark Deeps, was a finalist for the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children Award and the CLA Young Adult Book Award. Slade is also the author of Dust, a national bestseller and the winner of the 2001 Governor General’s Award for Children’s Literature, the Mr. Christie’s Book Award and the Saskatchewan Book Award for Children’s Literature. His other books include Tribes, Megiddo’s Shadow, Jolted, Monsterology, Villainology and the Canadian Chills series. He lives in Saskatoon. Visit him online at arthurslade.com.

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Megiddo’s Shadow

Megiddo’s Shadow explores the Middle Eastern campaign of WWI. Sixteenyear- old Saskatchewaner Edward Bathe enlists with the aim of avenging his older brother’s death in France. But instead of fighting the Germans in the trenches, he is frustrated to find himself in a mounted regiment, sent to Palestine to fight the Turks under a sergeant embittered by Gallipoli. In places he has read about only in the Bible – Jerusalem, Jericho and even Megiddo (the original site of Armageddon) – Edward discovers much about his colleagues, first love, the horrors of war, and much about himself. Arthur Slade dedicates the book to five members of his family who fought in WWI and to all the soldiers of “the Great War.”

H Megiddo’s Shadow

In this novel – by the award-winning author – a 16-yearold prairie boy enlists in the war. But he is totally unprepared for the horror that he is about to experience.