A Soldier's Secret
A secret much too great to tell, but he knows. Will he tell or will he keep his promise? Only God knows my fait; I send a silent plea to him for help. I am a soldier, my secret… I am a woman. If he tells my secret I will surly go to jail, if he doesn’t I will have a debt that I could never repay. Left at his mercy I begin my life story as I was told. This girl is Deborah, a woman secretly in the war. She is the main character in a Soldier's Secret by Sheila Solomon Klass. Her secret is being held above her head about to fall, will he save her, or will it crush her?
A secret much too great to tell, but he knows. Will he tell or will he keep his promise? Only God knows my fait; I send a silent plea to him for help. I am a soldier, my secret… I am a woman. If he tells my secret I will surly go to jail, if he doesn’t I will have a debt that I could never repay. Left at his mercy I begin my life story as I was told. This girl is Deborah, a woman secretly in the war. She is the main character in a Soldier's Secret by Sheila Solomon Klass. Her secret is being held above her head about to fall, will he save her, or will it crush her?
The one person who knows Deborah's secret is her Doctor. He takes care of her at his house to make sure no one knows her secret. In beginning of the story the doctor requests Deborah to tell her life story one day when she becomes his most famous patient. Deborah's father left her when she was 5 years old. Her mother couldn't support her family of eight on her own; her mother was forced to give away 5 of her 8 kids. One of those kids being Deborah.
Being a giveaway child at such a young age was difficult. Most of her life she felt like no one wanted her, that she was nothing to the world. Her second home was at her Cousin Ruth's; Ruth taught her to read and write. But when Ruth died when Deborah was eight; feeling unwanted again she was shipped off to another family. The caretaker was a sickly old woman; when she died Deborah felt hopeless and alone and not for the first time in her life either. Things weren't looking up for Deborah either; because she was shipped off to yet another family, the Thomas family farm. She was like there slave; but unlike her slave friend Jennie she would be one day free. She did all the work on the farm, this made her strong, healthy, and more like a young boy than a young girl. This hard farm life is what conditioned her for war.
Around Deborah's 13th birthday she started noticing minutemen training outside her window. This is about the time Deborah realized she wanted to be in the war. She kept waiting for the day she turned eighteen; that day came on December 17, 1778. In the mean time she secretly tried on her "brother's" clothes. She liked the way they felt; she secretly began to sew her own. She only told one person of her plan to go into the war, Jennie a slave. Deborah's plan has worked all up to that day in the war; the day she became sick. She had to go to a camp hospital; at this hospital she pretended to be dead so they wouldn't find out her secret. "It would be better they think she is dead and to be buried alive, then them finding out her secret." (Klass) That didn’t work eventually they found out that she was breathing. But thankfully this doctor had a strange want, to help her. And if Deborah does as he says she will be saved as will her secret.
Deborah is left with a secret held over her head like a rock about to fall, and at her doctor’s mercy. Will he let her secret crush her or will he save her?
