Soldiers Heart: Being the Story of the Enlistment and Due Service of the Boy Charley Goddard in the First Minnesota Volunteers

Gary Paulsen’s young adult novel Soldier’s Heart: Being the Story of the Enlistment and Due Service of the Boy Charley Goddard in the First Minnesota Volunteers highlights a young soldier’s experience in the Civil War. Many of the novel’s plot events are based on historical records, as is the novel’s main character Charley, who is based on the actual soldier Charley Goddard. However, Paulsen takes liberties within the story and notes that parts of the novel are fictional.

Paulsen shows the toll the bloody Civil War conflict took on soldiers emotionally. Although PTSD was not recognized or treated in the 1800s, soldiers still experienced it, and soldiers who struggled with PTSD-like symptoms after returning from combat were said to have “soldier’s heart.” The novel was published in 1998, and this guide refers to the 2000 Laurel Leaf edition.

Content Warning: This guide discusses topics including graphic violence, death, slavery, war, and suicide as depicted in Soldier’s Heart.

Plot Summary

Charley leaves his hometown of Winona, Minnesota in June 1861 to volunteer for the Union Army. He is only 15, legally too young to enlist, but he travels to Fort Snelling, where no one knows him or his age.

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