The year is 1861. The nation is fracturing. And in Dubuque, Iowa, two boys who have not yet seen their sixteenth birthday are about to discover what loyalty really costs. Jack Wilson and Harry Fulton work side by side in the same shop, have known each other since they were six, and now share something more urgent than childhood friendship: a burning need to serve. The president has called for seventy-five thousand men. The recruiting office flies its flag in the morning breeze. An excited crowd gathers outside. And two boys with hopeful faces walk toward a war they are almost certainly too young to fight. Thomas Wallace Knox captures something precious in this forgotten novel: the last innocent moment before everything changes. This is not a book about battles or generals. It is about the first heartbreaks of growing up, the weight of ideals not yet complicated by experience, and two boys who learn that wanting to be men and becoming them are very different things.
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