The year is 1776, and 13-year-old Samuel is living on the colonial frontier in Pennsylvania. Sam spends most of his life in the woods hunting and providing for both his family and their neighbors in their rural community. Largely, this is because he just loves communing with nature, but it is also partly due to the fact that he is not really a people person.

When coming home from one of his hunts, he arrives to find that his whole village has been destroyed by a group of redcoats and their Iroquois allies. While everyone had heard about the rebellion that had started a year earlier out east, no one had really put much thought to the fighting. Now, it had arrived on Sam's doorstep, and almost everyone in the village has been savagely murdered. The few survivors, including his parents have been rounded up and are marching toward New York City, where the British have a base and a place to hold war prisoners.

Sam then takes it upon himself to follow the caravan to rescue his parents. Along the way, he meets a number of people who will help him out, including a group of men hoping to join up with the colonial American riflemen because of the atrocities they have experienced at the hand of the British, a kind family offering him some comfort and good food, and an older gentleman who has taken on the role spy for the rebels.

In an author's note, Paulsen has made it clear that one of the reasons he felt the need to share this story was not to tell the tale of the American Revolution, but to really highlight the horrors of war for younger readers. From the very start of his journey, Sam is confronted with the violent challenges of battle, which include his own head injury from a tomahawk, but also visions of the injuries others received during the fighting. But it is not just the immediate harms that he sees and experiences. There are the emotional turmoils people have as a result as well as related health issues such as a high risk of infection from war wounds, life as a war prisoner, and just the harshness of the experiences.

This is a really strong tale, but it is also not for the meek of heart (or stomach!). With that said it really is an interesting tale about a boy becoming a man as he, alone, must do everything he can to rescue his parents from a horrible fate at the hands of the enemy in a war they wanted nothing to do with in the first place.