Virginia Dickens is nine years old in 1863. It's the middle of the Civil War. Her father and her brother Jed, who is 18 years old, leave their home in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to help Virginia's Uncle Jack hide his horses from the Confederate soldiers. Virginia wants to go with them, but her father says that the safest place for her is right in her own hometown, Gettysburg, with Rev. McCully's wife. Jed entrusts his journal to her, and he asks her to write in it for him while he's gone --- to be his eyes and ears and tell him everything she thinks and feels. Virginia misses her father and Jed, but she keeps Jed's journal faithfully.

At first, Virginia doesn't know what to write. She's never written in a journal before. She sits up on Cemetery Hill and describes what she sees --- grass and sky and gravestones. Dull, dull, dull. She writes how she really feels --- mad at not being able to go to Uncle Jack's, too. She's also annoyed that Rev. McCully's 18-year-old sister, Jane Ellen, talks about how much she likes Jed. After all, the only time Jane Ellen ever saw Jed is when he dropped off Virginia with the McCullys, so how can she know that she likes him?

It isn't long, though, before Virginia has lots of other things to write about. Gettysburg in 1863 is not a good place to be. Union and Rebel armies start marching through town. They camp all around it. Everybody knows there's going to be a big and important battle. Mrs. McCully is afraid the Confederates might win. The war hasn't gone well for the Yankees so far. And if the Yankees lose this time, the whole war might be lost. Virginia watches the Confederate army march down the street, giving their Rebel yells. They shout that they're going to whip the Yankees. She even sees General Robert E. Lee riding in front of the army, and he looks up at the window where she stands.

Everybody in town is scared. Some people leave on the last train allowed out. But Mrs. McCully won't abandon her home, because soldiers raid empty houses. She's a brave, strong woman. She has twins who are three years old, plus a new baby, and her husband is away in Philadelphia. He can't get home because the armies have stopped the trains and nobody can get through the soldiers' lines. Mrs. McCully bakes bread all day long, giving it away to hospitals and to anybody who needs it. She even gives some to a hungry Confederate soldier. She hides two Yankees, wounded in battle, who come to her door for help.

Virginia is brave, too. She goes out to watch the battle so she can write it down for Jed. When some Confederate soldiers come riding toward her, she climbs into a tree. She discovers that this was a mistake, though, because Confederates keep riding their horses on the road under the tree, and she can't come down. Then she falls out, right in front of Rebel soldiers on their galloping horses.

This book is a gripping account of one of the most crucial battles in America's history, told from the perspective of ordinary people in a small town, stunned at the war that comes to their doorsteps and into their very homes. The Battle of Gettysburg lasts for three days, and when it's over, the armies leave behind 20,000 wounded soldiers that the town of 2,500 people must care for. Hospitals are set up in churches, barns, farms, and wagon sheds --- even a pigsty. The townspeople open their homes to families from near and far who come to Gettysburg to find their dead or wounded loved ones. The stench of rotting men and horses fills the air.

This is the first book in the new MY AMERICA series of beautifully bound books about our country's history. Do you want to know what happens to Virginia when she falls out of the tree in front of the Rebels? Will her father and Jed get home safely? You will love reading this exciting book to learn what it was like to live at the very edge of the biggest and most terrible battle ever fought in America.

   --- Reviewed by Tamara Penny