By Laurie Halse Anderson
Atheneum, $16.99, ages 10-14
In her earlier prize-winning book "Chains," Laurie Halse Anderson viewed the early days of the American Revolution through the eyes of Isabel, an enslaved person brought from Rhode Island to Manhattan. "Forge" begins where that story ended. Isabel is now branded on her cheek for insubordination, half-frozen and exhausted, having engineered the escape of herself and Curzon, a young man promised his freedom for spying on the British, and then imprisoned by them. Both young people end up in the encampment at Valley Forge during the terrible winter of 1777-78. The focus on Isabel in the earlier book enabled close exploration of domestic slavery; the focus on Curzon gives a look at military life as it was, not as it has been idealized. Bravery and courage are set in the context of freezing cold, mud, profiteering, disease and political ambition. The famous names are there, but most gripping are the varying definitions of freedom and the paths to reach it among the more ordinary soldiers and citizens, slave and free.