How I Found the Strong

How I Found the Strong (2004), a historical novel for middle-grade readers by American author Margaret McMullan, follows the life of 10-year-old Frank “Shanks” Russell, who is left behind with his mother and grandparents when his father and older brother join the Confederate Army. As Shanks, his family, and their slave, Buck, endure hardships and shortages, they grow closer together, and Shanks begins to question the point of the devastating war. In the Author’s Note, McMullan relates how she discovered a manuscript from her grandmother’s great-uncle Frank Russell, which described his life in Mississippi during the 1850s and 1860s. Like Frank in the novel, McMullan’s ancestor stayed at home with the women and children during the Civil War. McMullan incorporates incidents from the real Frank Russell’s life story into How I Found the Strong. The novel was nominated for a Dorothy Canfield Fisher Book Award in 2006.

On their Mississippi farm, young Shanks watches enviously as his big, brawny Pa and older brother, Henry, pack up their belongings, getting ready to fight the Yankees. It is the spring of 1861, and Abraham Lincoln has just declared war on the South. Shanks, our first-person narrator, wishes he could join the army, but he is two years too young to be even a drummer boy. He is also weak and skinny, nothing like Henry, who is his Pa’s favorite. Irritated when his family calls him “Sonny,” “Chicken Legs,” and “Beanpole,” he is frustrated at being left behind with his Ma, Grandpa, and blind, crotchety Grandma.

Buck, the family slave who grew up with Shanks, also stays behind. Shanks doesn’t think much about slaves; they’re “like the tables and chairs we sit on and eat from. They are just there.” Buck has a terrible fear of water after witnessing his mama drown. Buck, who never made friends with other slaves, seems to be emotionless. Shanks wonders if Buck is happy. Henry and others in Shanks’s town believe that the war isn’t about slavery; rather, the Yankees just think the South is too strong and want to break it to tell folks how to live. Slavery, as Shanks understands it, is natural: “Buck is a colored boy and he’s a slave. I’m a white boy and I’m not a slave. That’s just the way God planned it.”



When Pa and Henry go off to battle, everyone believes it will be a “soft war” that will be over by Christmas. In the fall, Buck and Shanks work to bring in the crops. Neighbors help each other with the harvest, and Shanks thinks, “Sometimes it feels like us children are running the country.” There is no word from Pa or Henry, but neither of them knows how to write. Supplies of flour, coffee, and sugar are running low, and skirmishes come close to the farm. Buck and Shanks deliver bandages to soldiers in a makeshift hospital. As Shanks looks at the horribly injured men, he wonders where God is in all the suffering. Irene Beall, a girl from a wealthy family, volunteers as a nurse. Shanks also meets a red-headed deserter, Tempy, who is bound in chains.

The food shortage increases and the region is struck by drought. Ma is pregnant. Grandpa decides to leave the family to head west. He gives Buck a madstone to help with his fear of water, and he gives Shanks his harmonica and an arrowhead, which will help make him strong. During the winter of 1862, Ma teaches Buck to read, making him Shanks’s new learning partner. Grandma declines mentally and dies just before Ma goes into labor.

Shanks and Buck find Brother Davenport at the hospital, but he can’t come to help. They meet Tempy again, this time shackled with a ball and chain. Tempy explains he has had enough of killing. Shanks tells Tempy where to find an ax on their farm to remove his chain. Tempy frees himself, helps deliver Ma’s baby, then suggests that Buck run away with him. Buck refuses to leave Shanks. Hardships mount. Their mule is confiscated, several of Irene’s family catch scarlet fever, and her father is reported dead. By the fall of 1862, Shanks and his family have no food and nothing to sell. Their Confederate money is worthless. Pa returns home, missing his left arm and disillusioned by the war. Henry is dead: he had three fingers shot off and died of pneumonia in an army hospital. Shanks realizes that he is now as big and tall as his father.



Armed ex-Confederate soldiers come to their farm at night and take Buck away, intending to harm him. Shanks goes after the men, and he and Pa rescue Buck. Pa knows Buck must leave and head north. Together they walk Buck to the river Strong. Pa gives Buck his wages and his “freedom papers.”

On the way home, Shanks and Pa find themselves in the middle of a battle. A soldier attacks, slashing Pa with his bayonet and badly wounding him. Shanks shoots and kills the soldier, who turns out to be one of their own. Shanks bandages Pa’s injury as best he can, and they slowly make their way back to the farm, where they find Brother Davenport and his wife helping Ma. Irene Beall arrives and kisses Shanks. Pa declares it was Shanks who saved Buck, saying, “He did the right thing and that made me do the right thing.” Pa says Shanks also saved his life. Ma holds Shanks’s hand and calls him “Frank” and he knows he is not Shanks anymore.

In an Epilogue, Frank reveals that the family never heard from Grandpa again. Buck wrote a letter letting them know he made it to Chicago and is now helping build the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City. Pa is still farming, and Ma sells baked goods. Tempy joined the Union Army. Frank is a teacher and plans to marry Irene Beall.