March Toward the Thunder by Joseph Bruchac

In literature, Native Americans are usually portrayed as a vestige of the Old West, half of an ongoing game of cowboys and Indians.  Yet in March Toward the Thunder, a historical novel that would make Sherman Alexie proud, Joseph Bruchac shares the life of a young Abenaki Indian soldier in the US Civil War, an experience based upon the life of Bruchac's own great-grandfather.

March Toward the Thunder follows the brief soldiering experience of Louis Nolette, an Abenaki Indian from Vermont who joins the Union army for the money.  Finding himself a member of a mostly-Irish brigade, Louis must navigate the bloody battlefields of Virginia.  While Louis befriends the fellow soldiers of his regiment, he is constantly aware of the fact that his status as an Indian renders him something of an outsider.  Marching from battle to battle, Louis's keen Indian eyes, ears, and intuition become welcome resources to his military superiors.  Along his journey, friends are found and lost, creating a document that shows the brutal reality of war in terms as honest as any I've ever encountered.

Because of its capability to present historical accuracy in such a fascinating format, March Toward the Thunder would be a wonderful addition to any high school English  curriculum.  I think it would be appropriate for early high school, given the fact that its subject matter is intense without being overly graphic in its depiction of war.  It would be easy to tie this novel in with a curriculum about the Civil War; both Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln are minor characters in the book, and so Whitman's Civil War poems and The Gettysburg Address could be read in conjunction with the novel to create a deeper understanding of the climate and background of the US Civil War.  Such a unit would allow for cross-curricular learning with a history class, allowing students to learn more about the battles discussed in March Toward the Thunder while they read semi-fictionalized accounts of them in English class.

However, due to the fact that the entirety of March Toward the Thunder takes place during a 2-month span of time during the final summer of the Civil War, its plot line is somewhat redundant.  A repetition of marching, battle, marching, battle, and more marching is repeated to create the story line.  For those students interested in the Civil War, this will not seem too repetitious--but for students who are less than intrigued by the mid 1800s, the constantly repeated action might cause a lack of interest.

 Ultimately, I think that March Toward the Thunder would be a great YAL addition to a unit on Civil War literature.  Taken in the modern context of the US's current involvement in Iraq, reading a 15-year-old's first-person account of the horrors of war could lead to interesting discussion on students' thoughts about joining the military and going off to fight a war.  Louis is a genuine and relatable character, both as an American Indian and as a teenager.  Students in any English classroom would be able to relate to him and his search for friendship, belonging, and safety--even if his search is situated in the midst of one of the bloodiest wars in US history.