**Free teaching guide resource available for teachers and parents on the author's web site. www.geoffbaggett.com The British have invaded Charlestown and the Revolutionary War has descended with a vengeance upon the sleepy southern frontier. Oppression, violence, and fear overwhelm the villages and homesteads of North and South Carolina. Thirteen-year-old William Hamilton is violently drawn into the war by forces seemingly beyond his control. He is racked with guilt after he is forced to take part in a battle at a frontier cabin. He vows that he will never take up arms against another human...

Pierre Grimard's dream was to leave his boyhood home in France and voyage to America. He longed to begin a new life, business, and family in the French settlements of the faraway frontier in the Illinois country. Ten years later it seemed that Pierre had fulfilled every one of his dreams. He had a beautiful, devoted wife, a home full of children, and a thriving business in the French trading outpost at Vincennes on the Wabash River. Then in the winter of 1778 this tiny, primitive village became the epicenter of a bloody struggle between the powerful armies of Great Britain and the rebels of...