Where+Soldiers+Lie

By **John Wilson

Booktalk**

Jack has come to live in India after his parents' deaths in the Canadian wilderness in 1857. At sixteen, half British and half Indian, he is inextricably drawn to his Indian heritage yet knows that he cannot fully belong there. He is a half-caste. He enjoys some of the privilege of British colonial rule but rebels against the unforgiving, formal rules of social propriety deemed important by his aunt and uncle. He is beginning to see the injustice of British rule and events, small in themselves, start to create feelings of foreboding in him.

During a conversation with his uncle, he learns that the Indian sepoys or soldiers are refusing to bite the ends off of the gun cartridges before they are loaded. They have to do this to break the paper and allow the gunpowder to ignite. However, they refuse because the cartridges are greased with pig or cow grease. Either would violate the religious beliefs of the Hindi's or the Muslim's and cause the sepoys to be ostracized from their caste. Jack's uncle is furious with this situation and deems that the only solution is to make an example of them. "A few sepoys blown from the mouths of the regimental cannons will stop all of this nonsense."

Jack's disquiet grows, when one of his uncle's servants, Hari, explains the mysterious appearance of chapattis, or Indian bread, placed on their porch. It was a sign that war was coming, When several of the British officers' houses are burned down, the remaining British residents are encouraged to take refuge in the military barracks with all of the food, water and belongings that they can carry. So begins the 21-day siege when a mutinying Indian Army surrounds them. Of the thousand soldiers, women and children who take refuge, only a few hundred survive. Through it all, Jack tries his best to protect his friend Tommy, his aunt and uncle and Alice, the quarter-caste girl he has come to admire. Through each attack on the barracks, he also worries about his Indian friends like Hari. The grim realities of war take their toll.