Deadly Aim by Sally M. Walker - ADVISABLE

Deadly Aim: The Civil War Story of Michigan’s Anishinaabe Sharpshooters by Sally M. Walker, 288 pages.  Henry Holt and Company, 2019.  $20.  

Content: Language: PG (1 swear); Mature Content: G; Violence: PG-13   

BUYING ADVISORY: MS, HS – ADVISABLE  

AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE  

During the Civil War, Anishinaabe helped fight for the Union Army.  Company K was the largest completely American Indian company and they were composed mostly of sharpshooters.  Their story is a complicated mix of acceptance and segregation during the war, but their stories are like many soldiers at the time-stories full of love, of their family and a need to protect their land.  

Sally Walker does a great job portraying these Union soldiers’ heroic actions and desires for their families.  I enjoyed the pictures and especially the individual stories set against the larger story of the war.  I also love when an author tells little known side stories to the war, and I didn’t know that so many American Indians helped fight the war. I also knew nothing about the horrible prison conditions many Union prisoners of war faced in the Southern prison camps.  One of the Anishinaabe soldiers is fourteen and his story is followed throughout the war. The content includes an amputation that is described, battle injuries, blood and dead bodies, starvation to the point of eating vomit and horrible prison conditions.  

Reviewer, C. Peterson