PHANTOMS IN THE SNOW

In 1944, when his parents die of smallpox, 15-year-old Noah Garrett is sent to live with his uncle, James Shelley, at Camp Hale, Colo. Lying about his age, he enters the life of the soldiers, a winter warfare unit called the Phantoms, and learns to ski, rappel and handle himself in war games. Despite his pacifist past and his nagging conscience, Noah comes to like the camaraderie of the men and feels proud of his new skills, and at the same time the initially off-putting Shelley comes to appreciate Noah as the only family he has. Though a purposively inspirational scene stretches credulity when Noah, now a 16-year-old pacifist soldier, is put in charge of a mission in the mountains of Italy, Duble has created a likable character in Noah, whose struggles to find out who he is and where he belongs in a world at war are convincingly portrayed and realistically resolved. Details ranging from the development of nylon and penicillin to the Holocaust, Normandy and Italian resistance add depth to this fine historical novel. (author’s note, references, acknowledgments) (Historical fiction. 11-15)