Soldier's Heart: Being the Story of the Enlistment and Due Service of the Boy Charley Goddard in the First Minnesota Volunteers (by Gary Paulsen)

He returns home an old man at twenty-one, shattered in mind, body, and spirit. In an author's note, Paulsen tells us he died two years later of poorly healed wounds and what we would call post-traumatic stress. Includes map and bibiliography.

Kids who, like Charley Goddard, think that war is a noble and exciting endeavor will find out otherwise in SOLDIER'S HEART. Gary Paulsen pulls no punches in depicting the physical, emotional, and psychological effects in this absorbing Civil War chronicle based on a true story. With his characteristic blunt and muscular prose, Paulsen strips away the illusions and the rose-colored filters, and shows readers the truth.

Unvarnished truth is Paulsen's weapon, and he wields it formidably in descriptions of battles so graphic and yet so moving that the reader doesn't know whether to shudder in revulsion or weep at the waste of it all. Amid the carnage and stupidity, perhaps most devastating of all is watching young Charley turn from boy to old, old man within just a few years. Parents should be prepared to discuss this book with their children: They will be disturbed -- and if they're not, or if they think it's cool, then even more discussion is necessary.