Whether dealing with civil war-torn reece, the Rebel yells and gunfire of a Virginia battlefield, or a kibbutz in Palestine, reading a James Douglas Forman novel is to find oneself side-by-side with a young person trying to negotiate a wartime path through another time and another place. Reviewing recent world history for some of its most notable conflicts, Forman attempts to personalize and make real for readers war's grim realities through vivid characters and dramatic, suspenseful plots. In an essay for the Third Book of Junior Authors, the author comments: "If there is a common theme in the books I've written . . . it is the individual responding o the more savage impositions of the larger world . . . with the salvation of some dignity and love."

Forman was brn on New York's Long Island "during the Depression on a bright autumn Monday, twelve hours late for Armistice Day," the author notes...