Woods Runner (review)

Rumors about hostilities between colonists and the British have no sooner reached Samuel's remote settlement in western Pennsylvania than raiders and marauders themselves arrive. Samuel, observing an odd pattern of smoke while off in the forest hunting, hurries back home to find his neighbors brutally slaughtered and his parents, whose bodies were not among the corpses, evidently taken captive. The thirteen-year-old hastily buries the dead and then tracks the raiders eastward, hoping to locate his parents and hatch a plan for their rescue. Samuel may be the most skilled tracker in his settlement, but this is not a task he can accomplish on his own. On his trek he's aided by John Cooper, who nurses him back to health after being attacked by an Iroquois raider; the Clark family, who provide him with food and vital information about his parents, and whose murder Samuel later witnesses; and Abner McDougal, a tinker who acts as covert information conduit among rebellious colonists, and who helps in the rescue of Samuel's parents. Paulsen establishes Samuel's hunting skills early on, so readers are prepared to accept as credible his ability to survive the arduous journey to New York; moreover, the plan that finally saves his parents is so elegantly simple—bash the guard over the head with a brick, then grab Dad and Mom and run—that it seems well within the capability of a determined teen and his adult accomplice. Taut, restrained prose and insistent pacing keep the tension high, and the interludes of historical background that divide chapters are surprisingly unobtrusive. This should have strong appeal for readers with a penchant for Revolutionary War stories and, of course, for fans of Paulsen adventures.