Thank you to NetGallely & the publisher for the advance copy of this title. I enjoyed The Revenge of Joe Wild, but I think I'll have trouble recommending it to my students. Though it was an engaging adventure, the writing style and voice make this one a hard sell for what would be the book's target audience at my school.

An impoverished and semi-literate twelve-year-old named Joseph "Joe" Wild runs away when he is framed for the murder of his friend Ervan Foster, right as the Civil War breaks out. He makes his way across rivers and through untamed woods, relying on the sharp senses and survival skills taught to him by his once-competent, now-alcoholic father to evade the dangers that both nature and lynch mobs pose. Joined by Billy, a runaway slave, Joe makes his way to Washington to join the Union army to bide his time and become strong enough to avenge the death of Ervan.

Although The Revenge of Joe Wild was entertaining, I felt there was a bit of a bottleneck when first delving into it, partially because it's written completely in Southern dialect and mostly because of the pacing. The set-up of Joe's world allows for the reader to visualize and understand the society and environment he is in, down to the people populating it, and the descriptions of nature and the processes by which he survives out in nature were genuinely interesting to me. However, these beginning portions felt disproportionately long compared to the breakneck pace of the final third of the novel, which is where all the action is. Or perhaps the final third was disproportionately short. Besides the pace, the easy resolution of the mystery behind Ervan's death, as well as Joe's titular revenge, was anticlimactic.

Despite these hangups, The Revenge of Joe Wild was an interesting look into Civil War-era America in a region where the division between the Union and Confederacy is unclear.