Rifles for Watie, by Harold Keith, is a coming-of-age historical fiction novel based in the late 1800s. This book is the story of a young boy named Jeff who signed up to be in the army during the Civil War; Jeff had a dad who served in the Mexican War. Jeff and two of his close friends joined the army, the union was fighting the rebels. Once the union started marching, Jeff couldn’t wait any longer for the first battle. He had to march mile after mile to the next destination, but finally he got to his first battle. The union marched again and again until he found his next battle against the rebels; Jeff fought hard but had to surrender, this is when his opinion about fighting changed. When Jeff was marching through a small town he met a girl named Lucy Washbourne. A union officer asked Jeff he wanted to be a scout in the next battle, Jeff agreed but was mad he didn’t get to fight.

I thought this book was a very good book, it was very interesting and left you on cliffhangers making you want to read more. I felt like Harold Keith did a great job on sucking you back into the book making you want to read more and more. I really like how he would leave chapters with a cliffhanger; it just made you want to keep reading. I think I would recommend this book to anyone in 8th grade or up, you also need to like war stories if you want to read. I think it was a very good book overall.