Like the authors' Newberry Honor Book, My Brother Sam is dead, this is a comeplling historical novel set during the Revolutionary War period. The young narrator is caught in the midst of an agonizing struggle ... The boy's best friend, a half-black and half Indian boy who has been raised as the family's slave, leaves their home in Pennsylvania to secure his own freedom. The parallel between what freedom means for his friend and what the land symbolizes for his father is powerfully drawn in this intense and absorbing story"--School Library Journal