Charley Skedaddle

Patricia Beatty's Charley Skedaddle came out in 1987, first from Troll Associates, and it won the Scott O'Dell Award for historical fiction the following year. The story is built on real records of the American Civil War.

Charley is twelve and lives in New York, where he carries messages for the leader of the Bowery Boys. What he wants above all is to follow his older brother Johnny, who died at Gettysburg, and after getting into trouble with the gang he leaves home and joins the 140th Regiment to fight.

He is eager enough at first, but he runs away soon after he shoots a Confederate soldier, and he keeps running: he is caught, escapes when a chance comes, and goes on until he reaches the Blue Ridge Mountains. There he is taken in by Granny Bent, an old woman of the mountains who calls herself a doctor-woman, and the months he spends with her teach him a good deal about himself and leave him with a measure of self-respect that he takes away with him when he has to move on.