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Summary
Summary
On the brink of World War II, a family forced out of their London home flees to the country. Wolfie and his older sister Dodo are devastated to leave behind everything they've ever known, but they begin settling into their new life.
One day, they come across an orphaned fowl, which they raise as Hero, a strong and beautiful horse who lives up to his name when he saves the children from a fire.
Wolfie and Dodo find comfort in their new life, but the war is escalating quickly and horses are needed for combat. One night, Hero is stolen, and the children are shattered. Years then pass without any indication Hero will return. It's only when Wolfie becomes a stable hand that he discovers Hero has ended up working in the mines under terrible conditions. Then and there, Wolfie resolves to save Hero, a plan that places both of their lives in jeopardy. Together again, can they will survive?
Author Notes
Sam Angus grew up in Spain. She studied literature at Trinity College in Cambridge, and taught English before becoming a ski wear designer. She's the author of Soldier Dog and divides her time between London and Exmoor with her children, horses, and dogs.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Continuing to work in a vein of historical fiction reminiscent of War Horse, Angus follows Soldier Dog with a story about a British boy and a horse trying to find happiness against all odds. Eight-year-old Wolfie Revel's widowed father was honored with a medal after WWI, but he is being accused of desertion. For safety, Wolfie and his older sister, Dodo, are sent from London to the countryside, along with other children from the city. The siblings manage to stay together, and Wolfie befriends Hero, a grey foal whose friendship keeps Wolfie's spirits afloat as the years pass despite unfamiliar surroundings, fears about his father's trial, and horrific war news. Letters from Wolfie's father provide the boy with measures of both concern and comfort, offering advice concerning horses and life ("Be impatient with the world, Wolfie, but never be impatient with a horse"). Incorporating details about pacifism, horse training, and the dangers facing coal miners (Wolfie ends up working as one), Angus's expansive novel expresses the confusion and far-reaching effects of war and the meaning of heroism. Ages 9-12. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
The Germans have taken Paris, and barrage balloons, air-raid sirens, and nightly blackout preparations mark London as a city steeled for World War II. "It's the war, coming here," says Spud, who runs the household and takes care of eight-year-old Wolfie and his older sister Dodo since Ma died and Pa is off to war. Bombs fall and the children are sent to the countryside. As in Magorian's Good Night, Mr. Tom (rev. 6/82) or Bawden's Carrie's War (rev. 6/73), it's a difficult transition being city kids among strangers, but an orphaned foal named Hero helps the children adjust. Wolfie especially is full of wonder over the foal, "his full eight years of dreaming and longing finding their rest in those dark eyes." In a parallel story line, the children's father has been accused of desertion and takes a moral stance in the courtroom, but his reputation is shattered, and the novel becomes, partly, a meditation on the nature of war and heroism. Angus's prose is often poetic in its evocation of character and place--"The horses drew closer and halted, luminous and magical as a troop of moons come down to earth"--in a big, satisfying tale of friendship, family, and war. dean schneider (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A horse named Hero inspires his young owner to heroics in this suspenseful coming-of-age novel.When British troops escape from Dunkirk, instead of coming home, the widowed father of Dodo and her 8-year-old brother, Wolfie, is listed as missing, and the children are evacuated to the countryside. When their father is found but court-martialed for desertion, the children console themselves by remembering his World War I cavalry heroics; the locals aren't as forgiving, and the children take refuge with an eccentric clergyman and his adult daughter, who raises ponies. Wolfie's discovery of an orphaned foal becomes a lifeline to his maligned father; he names it Hero, and the letters his father writes him about earning a horse's trust become their primary relationship. The war years pass. Hero grows and is trained under saddle; he proves his worth in a desperate slog through bog lands that claims the life of Dodo's horse. Then Hero disappears. Angus' compelling writing and forceful plot mesh well to create a story that's more thriller than historical fiction. The focus of the third-person narration shifts between Dodo and Wolfie, which causes some confusion, and Dodo's character is not as well-drawn as Wolfie's. Some of the wartime details aren't quite right, but they don't hinder the story and will likely pass unnoticed.Adventure, a horse, faithfulness and truthan arresting combination. (Historical fiction. 10-14) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
The author of Soldier Dog (2013) shifts from WWI to WWII. Sent down from London to the safer countryside in 1940, 8-year-old Wolfie and his sister, Dodo, spend the war years in Exmoor, doing their best to ignore villagers' gossip about their father, a WWI cavalry hero now imprisoned and charged with desertion after the events at Dunkirk. Wolfie finds and raises a young foal he names Hero after his missing father, who advises and encourages his son via letters: You must never, never break trust with a horse. Wolfie's efforts to keep that trust are the meat of this moving story. In the riveting climax, he recovers his stolen horse, sold to work in the coal mines, only to be trapped in a mine disaster. Courage is . . . when you've no choice, he remembers his father saying. There's plenty of food for thought here for example, the issues of mine worker's rights and war opposition but readers will remember best the determined boy's passion for his beloved horse.--Isaacs, Kathleen Copyright 2014 Booklist
Excerpts
Excerpts
Chapter One Wolfie stopped, distracted by the stacks of sandbags and newly dug trenches. Above Rotten Row, silver barrage balloons strained and sang on their cables. They were like sails in a high wind, he thought, or great prehistoric birds. Tolerant of her small and willful brother, Dodo waited, sighing loudly as Wolfie turned to look at some cavalry, dropping his gas mask to the ground. A team of grey horses was trotting brightly up the South Carriage Drive. Wolfie watched, transfixed; Captain had been a grey too. After the war Pa had ridden Captain along the North Ride for the Victory Parade of 1918, the medal on his chest, the cheering crowds, all captured in Ma's photograph on the mantel at home. The horses drew closer and halted, luminous and magical as a troop of moons come down to earth. A frown creased Wolfie's brow. He remembered Pa, here in the park, after war broke out, the day before he'd left to fight again in France. He remembered how he'd turned, white-faced, from the animals he so loved, and said, "I hate all of it and what it stands for..." Wolfie had felt confused then, and shocked, and still felt confused now. He gave a determined shrug, took Dodo's hand, and asked, for the hundredth time, his heart bright and staunch with pride, his face luminous with the spotless sweetness of the very young and very loved, "Pa did a great thing, didn't he, Dodo? That's why he got the medal. The bravest of the brave, isn't he?" Dodo was silent. "When the war finishes, Dodo, when Pa comes home, we'll start riding here again, won't we?" "Wolfie, march," Dodo ordered testily. "You look silly in a skirt, Dorothy." This was currently Wolfie's favored riposte to an unwelcome instruction, guaranteed to annoy. Dodo scowled at the hateful name, at the hateful pleated skirt. "And you have a silly name. Wolfgang is a German name." Wolfie took no notice. "He will be grey ... with a dark mane ... my horse will--" "Quick march," Dodo instructed her one-man troop. Wolfie's world was filled with brigades and beating drums, banners and bugles. Only cavalry instructions would get the result that Dodo wanted. Wolfie gathered a set of imaginary reins, extended an imaginary lance, and galloped away, whispering to himself, "He will be brave and he will have a silver tip to his tail..." Wolfie galloped all the way to the bus stop at Lancaster Gate. At the poster of the child and gas mask, his gallop faltered. Dodo waited, smiling. " Take care of your gas mask ," she chanted, dangling it before him as he turned, " and your gas mask will take care of-- " Wolfie snatched it and galloped on. * * * Stacks of dark green stretchers stood between the new brick-surface shelters at Lancaster Gate. A new sign read SHELTER THIS WAY. There was a shelter at school too, but it was like a damp brown igloo inside, with garish nasturtiums on the roof. London was in a state of perpetual preparation and precaution, something immense always on the brink of happening. Everywhere the endless warnings about gas masks, everywhere the constant instruction to leave London, to "give children a chance of greater safety and health," every day the announcement that the evacuation of children from the cities would continue. But how could you leave London when no one knew where your father was, when he might return at any minute, when you only had Spud to look after you, and she didn't seem to know any more than you did? "We won't leave London, never, not till Pa comes home," Dodo whispered fiercely. "Tens of Thousands Safely Home Already," the newspapers had said last week. Dodo shivered. There'd been so many photographs of the boats of Dunkirk, so many thousands of boats. Tens of thousands of returning men, the newspapers had said, but Pa still hadn't come. There'd been no letter, no telegram, nothing. When they reached George's corner shop, Wolfie, thinking of his sweet ration, abandoned his rein and lance, and began to excavate a pocket, groping for the coin that must be there somewhere. Dodo, giving him as always her own ration slip, hustled him inside, with her studied attitude of tolerant exasperation. George came out, waved to Dodo, then bent to chalk a message on the stand of the Daily Mirror to the right of the door: PARIS SURRENDERS Dodo's stomach lurched, her hands flew to her mouth, and she was screaming inwardly, Where is he? Where is Pa? Was he on his way back? Would he be back tonight? Tomorrow? Wolfie emerged with two ounces of lurid Torpedoes in a paper bag, a violet one in his mouth, staining his lips. "Have we won the war, Dodo?" he asked in a loud voice. "They've taken Paris," she said quietly. Wolfie had to decode the progress of the war only from Spud the housekeeper's grumblings and mumblings and his sister's occasional pronouncements. He frowned, digested this new clue, then dismissed it as not fitting with his view of the way things should go. "Pa will get another medal, won't he, Dodo?" he said comfortably. "Home," ordered Dodo, her heart thumping a drumbeat. Where is he, where is he? She remembered the tears down Pa's face when a thin and trembly voice on the radio had announced that Britain was at war. When the National Anthem started, Pa had snapped the wireless off. Spud, roused and teary, the plate of roast beef in her hands, had said, "Think of all our men going..." And Pa had answered, "Spud, think of all the women in Germany saying the same thing." Only Pa could call Mrs. Spence a name like Spud. Since Ma died, Spud had taken over the running of the house and the care of the children. She was so fond of Pa, so proud to work for him, that he could call her anything. But that evening she'd looked at Pa, shocked and perhaps a little wounded too. Dodo marched Wolfie on. She remembered the OHMS letter recalling Pa to the Army, Pa's grief and his reluctance to leave the work he'd been doing, his papers and speeches about the conditions of the coal miners. He'd wanted, really wanted to continue that work. Then the second OHMS letter had come, warning Pa to report. Dodo remembered Spud saying darkly that Pa must either report or be arrested. In the end Pa had gone. Dodo turned into Addison Avenue. But now Paris had fallen; Pa must be coming back from France. "Halt," she said as Wolfie reached the iron gate of Number 25, but her troop mutinied on the generous stone steps, was launching itself at the double door, erupting through it, scattering satchel and mask across the black-and-white-checkered floor. Spud was standing on a chair in the dining room, her sturdy figure loosely enveloped in swathes of black sateen. "Ha," she said, fitting the last hook, hands on her cumbersome hips. "Not a chink of light will escape now." Dodo hovered beside her, a question on her lips but Spud dismounted, turned from her, and said, "Wolfgang Revel, must you always be such an explosion?" She gathered up his coat, cap, satchel, and mask. Wolfie ran to the map pinned above the sideboard. "Where? Where? " he asked, his small hand hovering over Luxembourg and Belgium. " Where do I move our men?" Wolfie's confidence in victory had survived, undaunted, the flood of black pinheads into Poland, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands. "Better off on our own," Spud had sniffed at the fall of Belgium, happy at such concrete evidence of the feebleness of foreigners. " Where? " Wolfie asked again. Spud put her finger on the French coast. "Twenty-one miles of water is all that separates us from the enemy. Just a bit of water and it's not just our soldiers that are coming back across that water, it's the war, coming here"--she jabbed a plump forefinger on Dover--"right back here." Spud favored a gaudy and sensational turn of phrase, and was prone to speaking in headlines. "But have we won?" Wolfie asked, bewildered. Spud shook her head. "Then why're the soldiers coming back?" Dodo, still hovering close to Spud, waiting for the right minute, asked finally, "Is it true? Are they--is Pa--will he...?" Spud pursed her lips and busied herself at the tea table with the plate of boiled beef. Dodo waited as Spud lamented the dangers of London, the closeness of the war, the suitability of countryside in general for children, digressing into her perpetual lament about the difficulty of knowing how to go about things when she never heard anything, when for all she knew anything could have happened and was she expected to go on forever alone? Spud liked the children to remain aware at all times of the trying circumstances in which she had to operate. These were all familiar themes to Wolfie so he took no notice, but Dodo watched her closely. * * * Spud removed the remains of beef and served pudding. Wolfie stared at his bowl. "Roly-poly with no jam is no fun." He moved aside his bowl and emptied an old Highland shortbread tin onto the table. Lead cavalry figures spilt onto the mahogany surface. "Will you play, Dodo?" He picked up the horse he called Captain, after Pa's horse, and placed him upright, glancing as he did so at the photograph on the mantel of Pa on Captain, Captain's grey coat lustrous as a star against the dark crowds, the bronze cross on Pa's chest. Pa's medal for the Moreuil Wood, for the last great cavalry charge, was a flame to Wolfie, a flame to warm him, Pa's honor a light to live by. Dodo glanced at Wolfie before turning to Spud and whispering, "Wasn't Pa on a boat--?" Spud folded her arms. "I hear the Jameson twins have left town. And Posy Cayzer's going to an aunt in Wiltshire ... the country's the sensible place for children." Spud looked emphatically at Ma's oil painting above the dresser, her largest canvas, of the russet and umber hills where she'd holidayed as a child. "Are all our men coming home?" Dodo persisted. "Haven't you heard anything--?" "Bath time," said Spud. "It's not bath time," said Wolfie, looking suspicious because it was always suddenly bath time at awkward moments. "How am I to know...?" muttered Spud, collecting a basket of fresh towels from the laundry. Copyright © 2013 by San Angus Excerpted from A Horse Called Hero by Sam Angus All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
