Joseph Plumb Martin was 15 in 1776 when he enlisted in the revolutionary army for what became seven years of military duty of a sort he could never have imagined at the outset. Typical Revolutionary War history available to the young does not picture the unromanticized ordinary soldiering endured by Joseph and others of his time. Murphy's well-documented, carefully developed narrative is divided into eight chapters and abundantly illustrated with reproductions of engravings, several early maps, a handbill, and a painting. A three-page chronology of the American Revolution, three-page bibliography of additional sources, and five-page index complete the singular book. (Ages 9-14)

In the summer of 1776, Joseph Plumb Martin was a fifteen-year-old Connecticut farm boy who considered himself as warm a patriot as the best of them. He enlisted that July and stayed in the revolutionary army until hostilities ended in 1783. Martin fought under Washington, Lafayette, and Steuben. He took part in major battles in New York, Monmouth, and Yorktown. He wintered at Valley Forge and then at Morristown, considered even more severe. He wrote of his war years in a memoir that brings the American Revolution alive with telling details, drama, and a country boy's humor. Jim Murphy lets Joseph Plumb Martin speak for himself throughout the text, weaving in historical backfround details wherever necessary, giving voice to a teenager who was an eyewitness to the fight that set America free from the British Empire.