Rifles for Waitie, by Harold Keith

I feel like this book has been in every 4th-6th grade classroom ever. It was the sort of book that was always just . . . around. No one directly encouraged me to read it but the pressure was always there by its very presence. Looking at the cover with my inexperienced kid brain, it just looked like one more book about some young boy running off the join the Revolutionary War and with one notable exception (My Brother Sam Is Dead, I'm looking at you) boys-caught-up-in-war books did not appeal to me and were overused in the curriculum, so I intentionally ignored this one with a clear conscience.

Let it be said firstly that this is a book about the Civil War, not the Revolutionary. And it does have an interesting perspective, taking place around the Missouri/Kansas border. I did gain some interesting insights about how the war looked in that part of the country, as opposed to the East Coast as usual. However, this is just not my genre and I found myself skimming to get to the end. If this blog used a "coming of age" tag, it would be aptly applied here.