After 18 titles for young readers about complex political situations abroad,John Wilson has brought his fiction formula close to home with Red Goodwin (Ronsdale $9.95), an introduction to the life and times of the socialist folk hero Ginger "Red"; Goodwin who was forced to seek refuge in the woods around the coal mining community of Cumberland due to his activities as a union organizer.

Following the death of his father in World War I, young Will Ryan is sent to live with his uncle, a mine manager at Cumberland on Vancouver Island. Will's chance meeting with the outlaw Red Goodwin in the forest prompts him to consider the legitimacy of the miners' unionized protests and Goodwin's radical view that the conflict between Britain and Germany has capitalist origins. Along the way Will befriends a Chinese boy and learns about racism, and he falls in love with a beautiful Scottish girl whose family is helping Goodwin survive in the woods.
Wilson's preceding young adult novel Four Steps to Death (Kidscan $19.95) revisits the horrific encounter between the troops (and egos) of Hitler and Stalin during the battle and siege of Stalingrad, 1942-1943. Resulting in more than one million deaths, this 229-day impasse was the turning point in World War II, after which the Germans never won a major battle. Wilson revisits the city now known as Volgograd through the experiences of a German tank commander named Conrad, a patriotic Russian soldier named Vasily and an eight-year-old boy named Sergei who tries to survive in the rubble.

In an afterword, Wilson notes the starving and freezing remnants of the German army under Field Marshall von Paulus finally surrendered on February 2, 1943. "The dead were burned in piles on the open steppe and the survivors marched off to a captivity from which few returned,"; he writes. The battle of Stalingrad remains under-acknowledged in the West because American, British and Canadian troops did not participate.

Wilson's forthcoming young adult novel is Where Soldiers Lie (Key Porter $15.95). Set in the exotic world of British Imperial India, it charts the adventures of Jack O'Hara through the tumultuous summer of 1857. With barely time to adjust to his new world after being wrenched from his home in Canada, Jack is plunged into mutiny, siege and massacre. Jack manages to make new friends, but will any of them survive?

Red 1-55380-034-6; Four Steps 1-55337-704-4;
Where Soldiers Lie 1-55263-790-6

[BCBW 2006] "Labour"