The Army's Youngest Pigeoneer

About this book:

In the mist-choked lanes of Kent, twelve-year-old Lily Vance counts the days since her brother's last letter—nine days of silence from the Argonne, where Arthur runs messages through mud and shrapnel for the American 77th Division. When a battle-scarred homing pigeon lands on her washhouse roof, its leg band glinting like a promise, Lily sees what the generals cannot: a way to breach the silence. With her grandfather's forbidden knowledge and a forbidden loft hidden in the hay-loft, she begins a covert campaign to raise birds that might fly where runners fall.

But the military wants no civilian interference, her mother fears only more loss, and the marsh-dwelling fancier who holds the bloodlines of champions has buried his birds—and his heart—since Ypres. As the Meuse-Argonne offensive grinds into its deadliest phase and the Lost Battalion disappears into the woods, Lily's secret flock becomes the only thread between a sister's desperation and a brother's survival.

Based on the true, little-known story of the U.S. Army Signal Corps Pigeon Service, *The Army's Youngest Pigeoneer* is a soaring tale of courage measured in wingbeats, where a girl's refusal to accept silence changes the fate of men she has never met—and proves that even the smallest messengers can carry the weight of history.