Author Description

"When Elizabeth spots an antique doll dressed in a soldier's uniform at a local garage sale, she thinks that it might be a good last-minute birthday gift for her dad, who's about to ship out to Afghanistan. But is it more special? Could it be the very soldier doll that inspired a famous poem written during World War I? In finding the doll, Elizabeth has become the latest link in a chain of love and loss that began in England during World War I, when a young woman gave the doll to her fiancé before he left to join the fighting in Europe. From there to Nazi Germany in the 1930s, to a Czech concentration camp in World War II, and on to a young American soldier in Vietnam in the 1970s, the doll has been passed from hand to hand, in moments of both hope and sadness. Is the little soldier a good luck charm, or an unlucky foreteller of death? Now its fate lies in the hands of Elizabeth, who feels compelled to find its original owner. Like those who came before her, she will be tested by the realities of war, and she too will need to find the hope and courage to go on"--Page 4 of cover.