Where Soldiers Lie

I read a book intended for young people the other day and quite enjoyed it. Where Soldiers Lie by John Wilson (2006 YA WIL) is a fast-paced historical novel about the siege of Cawnpore (now called Kanpur) in India in 1857.

Sixteen year old Jack O’Hara has come from the Western Canadian wilderness to live in India where his parents had first met and married. They went to Canada to escape the censure that came with their mixed marriage – his mother was Indian – only to die of smallpox in the new world. Living with his very proper Aunt Katherine and Uncle James back in India, everything is new and strange, but with the help of his horse, Australian, and Hari, the stable boy, he is learning to adapt.

One day a pile of chapattis are left on their doorstep and Hari tells Jack this means trouble. It symbolizes a declaration of war. A few days later, Jack finds himself and about one thousand soldiers, women and children taking refuge in an inadequate barracks surrounded by a shallow trench under a constant barrage of gunfire. Food supplies dwindle, bodies pile up and are dumped into the Sepulchral Well, and reinforcements are stalled miles away.

Twenty-one days later the siege is over and almost everyone is dead. Wilson does not sugar-coat the action but does not wallow in it either. This story is action packed but not a glorification of war. He presents the reasons for the uprising and the response of the British in a balanced way.

Wilson brings history to life and that is just what is needed to catch the interest of young readers, boys in particular. As someone once said we should study history so that we don’t repeat it, and reading about events in the historical novel is one way to do that.

>> Find this book in VIRL’s catalogue

Taken with permission from Gloria Novak’s “Good Reads at the Library“