Once on This Island
Grade 4-7?A novel set on Mackinac Island, Michigan, during the War of 1812. Mary, 12, recounts her family's plight as her father leaves his motherless children tending the farm while he joins the American forces in Detroit fighting the British. Jacques, 15, struggles to keep his promise to take care of the farm and his two sisters when the temptation to join the army or the fur trading business prevails. Sixteen-year-old Angelique's flirtations with the British soldiers during the occupation of their island home infuriates both her brother and sister. Despite these distractions, the young people still manage to maintain a productive farm for the three-year period of the war. Whelan weaves the Indian and American culture together through a complex secondary character, Gavin, an Indian boy raised by Mary's neighbors, who is forced to come to terms with his heritage as he makes the crucial decision to leave his Anglo parents and way of life and rejoin his tribe. Well-rounded fiction that incorporates a little romance, adventure, drama, and history of an American period that is not as commonly used for background.?Rita Soltan, Baldwin Public Library, Birmingham, MICopyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.