Book Review: With the Swamp Fox, by James Otis

With the Swamp Fox, by James Otis

My rating: 6 out of 10 stars

So-so

Age range: 12-16

       With the Swamp Fox is a short story of the American Revolution, written from the perspective of young Robert Sumter, who, with his twin brother, served American General Francis Marion in South Carolina. The thirteen year-old brothers and their friend, an older man named Gavin Witherspoon, do good service as scouts for the small band of patriots who still remain in the trampled Carolinas. They are frequently thwarted though by a Tory boy near their own age. Eventually, they meet face to face and after he murders a friend of the brothers, Robert settles their quarrel.

      Dubbed “The Swamp Fox” by the angry British officers whom he harassed, General Marion was an upright and brave patriot- one who would rather take a risky leap from a window than join a carousal, and who always struck the British hardest when they were least expecting it. This book is good in that it teaches about this general, who rose in what was perhaps the darkest hour of the Revolution, at least, for the Carolinas. However, the story is not the sort that grabs and holds your attention, and ends abruptly, right after the death of a good friend of Robert.