PONY SOLDIER

Devoted to the Southern cause, Cass Stevens and Gunter Morgan join the Rebel forces only to be captured by the Federal army and sent to a prison camp somewhere along the Mississippi. Prison life is difficult but bearable, highlighted only by the rewarding sense of satisfaction the boys experience as they carefully plan and aid ten fellow prisoners in a successful escape. Soon after, the Rebel prisoners are required to join forces with their captors to fight a common, more deadly enemy, the Sioux Indian. It is in this battle that Cass and Gunter discover differences in men beyond those distinguished by uniform color, an important lesson, dramatically digested in the thick of disaster, and one that has pertinence to modern readers as well.