Woods Runner (Gary Paulsen)

Woods Runner
Gary Paulsen
Wendy Lamb Books
Fiction, MG Historical Fiction
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Since before he could remember, Samuel has been drawn to the woods beyond the family homestead on the frontier of colonial America. His city-born parents barely venture out of sight of their cabin, but the boy thrives among the trees, learning to read trail sign as easily as letters. By the time he turns 13 in the year 1775, he's the main hunter in their small settlement. When rumors reach the farm about unrest in nearby Boston, Samuel doesn't expect it to matter. The homesteaders aren't rebelling against anyone, harmlessly tending their land, too far out of the way to be bothered by wars or politics.
Then Samuel comes home from a hunting trip to find the farms ablaze, most of his neighbors dead, and his parents missing - taken captive by redcoats.
Barely surviving an encounter with the English soldiers and their Indian scouts, Samuel is rescued by a group of Americans on their way to join up with the fledgling rebellion. The young man still wants no part in wars or violence, but the war has stolen away his family, and there's nothing he won't do to free them - even venture far from his beloved woodlands to the teeming throngs of English-held New York City.

REVIEW: Intercutting Samuel's story with historical facts on the American Revolution, Paulsen presents a side of the conflict that often gets brushed aside, the average colonist who never even thought about politics or rebellion until the brewing war trampled their lives and drew first blood. Though his parents are first-generation farmers learning as they go, Samuel has known no life but that of a woods runner, and despite all the books he reads and stories he's told by other homesteaders he could see no finer future for himself than spending his days among the trackless frontier forests, far from city folk and their troubles. The small settlement he's part of thinks that their indifference and insignificance will spare them having to choose a side, but they barely even hear of the Boston Massacre (communication being a slow and spotty thing in the late 1700's) before they wake to find redcoats at their door. Most are slaughtered outright, but Samuel's parents are taken captive... and thus begins Samuel's journey, not just from the woodlands to civilization, but from peace to war. From the outset, despite his misgivings over killing another human being, he is determined to do whatever it takes to get his parents back, even despite the great odds against him. He's never even seen a real town before, much less a proper city - and New York City is firmly in the grip of the British forces, where thousands of colonist prisoners languish in desperate, often deadly conditions, with minimal food and no medical care; more Americans died as prisoners of war than in combat during the Revolution, according to historical records... and even those records often gloss over civilian casualties. Through sheer grit and some luck, Samuel manages to rise to the occasion, though the experience leaves scars, not all of them physical. A relatively short tale, Woods Runner successfully evokes both the feeling of the long-lost primeval frontier wilderness and what it was like to quite literally have an international war turn up on the doorstep, ending a small and quiet dream of pastoral life in a single world-shattering moment.

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