Behind the Book: The Fighting Ground

Avi writes:

I was living in New Jersey, and was coming home from a meeting with an editor. During that meeting I was told that the manuscript I had just submitted was being turned down, rejected. As I rode the bus home from that meeting I kept thinking about what might I write next.

As it happens, New Jersey has many road-side historical markers alerting passers-by that such and such a thing happened a long time ago. Many of the markers pertained to our War of Independence. One such marker we passed caught my attention. It told of a small skirmish between revolutionaries and mercenary Hessian soldiers. The marker said, “Only a few were killed.”

I thought about that word “few,” and realized that while it might have been “few” and not of great consequence to the big struggle, for those few people involved it was of great, great consequence. So it was that I came to write The Fighting Ground. It’s about a small event in a huge war, which becomes a huge moment in a young boy’s life.