Avi begins his book Loyalty with the date of Friday, April 4, 1774, and the sentence, “On this day, my father was murdered because he said a prayer.” A crowd of fifteen angry men gathered outside looking through the windows as his father said grace at the family dinner table, a grace that included a blessing for the king and the royal family. The men hauled his father outside, stripped him of his clothes, and tarred and feathered him. His father refuses to denounce the king and pronounces as his last words, “God save England.”
After his father’s death, thirteen-year-old Noah is beaten as well for not telling who the Tories are, even though he doesn’t know. Afterwards, he is absolutely certain that the loyalists are right and the Sons of Liberty are wrong. He is fearful for himself and the rest of his family and flees with them to Boston. He becomes a spy for the British who must be right since they espouse the beliefs of his father. He will see many behaviors and much hypocrisy on both sides before he comes to understand what his mother means when she keeps telling him “be true to yourself.” He will slowly gain a new perspective on what it means to be really free from Jolla Freeman. Jolla, a free Black man, questions Noah’s thinking without judging him until he begins to question it himself. Jolla lives among two sets of people who are adamant that they are right, yet both groups are willing to enslave people to reach their goals.
I became a fan of Avi’s writing with The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. He knows how to take his readers to a different time as he weaves an absorbing story. Loyalty makes its debut on February 1, according to my Net Galley listing, but on February 8, according to Amazon. Like Avi’s previous books, it puts a compelling story in the midst of a historical time and shows the hard choices its characters must make. He writes for middle grade and for people like me who love compelling middle grade historical fiction.