Soldier's Heart

October 4, 1999
From the author interview at the beginning of this recording, listeners will be caught up in Paulsen's storytelling. His wrenching look at the brutal Civil War (based on one boy's real-life experiences) comes to life via Wendt's (Cheers) robust bass voice. As a patriotic and eager 15-year-old, Charley Goddard lies about his age to join the First Minnesota Volunteers in 1861. He never imagines that taking part in the "shooting war" means watching thousands of men be killed and wounded and seeing many others suffer from dysentery and other diseases. From Bull Run to Gettysburg, listeners march with Charley to the front lines, getting a better picture of just how awful battle can be. Though Charley survives the war with only relatively minor physical injuries, his mind and soul are forever changed--he suffers post-traumatic stress disorder, then called soldier's heart. He dies, feeling much older than his years, at 23. Wendt provides some tender moments as Charley deals with horrific conditions, and he skillfully avoids melodrama in a generally straightforward reading. Ages 12-up.

Starred review from September 7, 1998
Addressing the most fundamental themes of life and death, the versatile Paulsen produces a searing antiwar story. He bases his protagonist, Charley Goddard, on an actual Civil War soldier, a 15-year-old from Minnesota who lied about his age and ended up participating in most of the war's major battles. At first Paulsen's Charley is fired up by patriotic slogans and his own naive excitement; in a rare intrusion into the narrative, the author makes it clear that ending slavery was not the impetus: "Never did they speak of slavery. Just about the wrongheadedness of the Southern `crackers' and how they had to teach Johnny Reb a lesson." But Charley's first battle--Bull Run--immediately disabuses him of his notions about honor and glory. A few sparely written passages describe the terror of the gunfire and the smoke from the cannons. Interwoven with these descriptions, a brilliant, fast-moving evocation of Charley's thoughts shows the boy's shocked realization of the price of war, his absolute certainty that he will die and his sudden understanding of the complex forces that prevent him from fleeing. Details from the historical record scorch the reader's memory: congressmen bring their families to picnic and watch the fighting that first day at Bull Run; soldiers pile the bodies of the dead into a five-foot-high wall to protect themselves from a winter wind. By the time Charley is finally struck down, at Gettysburg, he has seen it all: "At last he was right, at last he was done, at last he was dead." He is not in fact dead, but a victim of "soldier's heart," defined in an eloquent foreword as a contemporaneous term for what is now called post-traumatic stress disorder. Paulsen wages his own campaign for the audience's hearts and minds strategically and with great success. Elsewhere, as in The Rifle, he has told stories in service to a message; here the message follows from the story ineluctably. Charley comes across fully human, both his vulnerabilities and strengths becoming more pronounced as the novel progresses. Warfare, too, emerges complexly-while a lesser writer might attempt to teach readers to shun war by dint of the protagonist's profound disgust, Paulsen compounds the horrors of the battlefield by demonstrating how they trigger Charley's own bloodlust. Charley cannot recover from his years of war; in a smaller but more hopeful way, neither may the audience. Paulsen's storytelling is so psychologically true that readers will feel they have lived through Charley's experiences. Ages 12-up.