Soldier Doll by Jennifer Gold

Jennifer Gold has written a wonderful novel with a very unique storyline. The novel is a series of stories interwoven with a narrative in the present about a girl who finds a small wooden soldier doll..

Soldier Doll opens in the year 2007 with fifteen year old Elizabeth Bryant who, along with her mother Amanda, who is a dermatologist, and her father John have just moved from Vancouver to Toronto. Her father, an aeronautical engineer in the Canadian Armed Forces, will be working out of CFB Trenton before he ships out to Afghanistan.

While searching for a birthday gift for her dad at a community garage sale, Elizabeth finds a small wooden doll. The  doll is very unusual with a baby face, blond hair, blue eyes but it has a soldiers uniform painted on rather than made with clothing. Sensing her dad, who enjoys collecting junk, might like this, Elizabeth purchases the doll. The lady who sells her the soldier doll tells her that she found it by the side of the road. When she gives it to her father on his birthday, her mother seems to think the doll might be special, but can't remember why.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth is understandably having trouble adjusting to life in Toronto. She misses her friends Katie and Elise and is lonely. With less than a week before the start of school, her mother suggests that she go out to meet people. Elizabeth does this one evening and soon discovers a used bookstore called Read It Again Sam. At the bookstore Elizabeth meets the young store clerk, Evan, and Boris, the store owner's large black and white rabbit. 

Elizabeth discovers the store has a copy of Margaret Merriweather's novel, Autumn Evening, one of her favourite books. Evan tells Elizabeth about Merriweather's poetry and asks if she studied Merriweather's 'The Soldier Doll' in grade ten. Stunned at the coincidence of a poem about a soldier doll and her having found just such a doll at the garage sale, Elizabeth learns from Evan that the poem is about a real soldier doll that went missing during a war and which people have been searching for many years. Evan locates a copy of the poem and buys it for Elizabeth and asks her to friend him on Facebook. At home, Elizabeth begins to read the poem, and based on the description of the doll wonders if the doll in the poem is the same one she's found.

The story then moves to Devon, England in 1918 where Edwin (Ned) Roberts has just told his love, Margaret (Meg) Merriweather that having recovered from pneumonia, he plans to enlist. Meg is distraught because none of the boys who enlisted have returned home from the war. Ned proposes to Meg, giving her a ring and she accepts. While she wants to get married immediately, Ned refuses, telling Meg that they should have a proper wedding when he returns home.

Meg lives with her father, a cabinetmaker in a small stone cottage that is over three hundred years old. Her father is proud of Meg's writing and has built her a desk. On her writing desk is a small wooden doll he made for her when her mother died. The doll, named Will, has a sweet baby face. Meg, anxious for Ned before he ships out, insists they do the ritual of handfasting where a couple "hold hands and promise marriage for a year and a day." He reluctantly agrees. Not able to give him a ring, Meg gives Ned her wooden doll now painted in a soldier's uniform.

As Ned goes through training and then is in the trenches at Flanders and Ypres, Meg reads his letters and works on her wedding dress. Part of handfasting was to consummate their marriage which she and Ned had done. Now three months after, Meg finds herself pregnant with his child. And then she learns from Ned's father that he has been killed while rescuing an injured soldier. When Ned's effects are returned to her, Meg notices that the toy soldier is not in his box. In her grief, Meg miscarries her baby. In her immense grief, she begins to write a poem about what has happened.

The narrative returns to Toronto in 2007. Convinced that the soldier doll is an important antique, Elizabeth mentions the soldier doll poem to her parents and how the doll has been missing for years. Her father contacts Dr. Madeleine McLeod, an archeologist and twentieth century historian and they meet with her. She notes that the doll, which she believes was made in the early twentieth century, is wearing the wrong uniform. Margaret Merriweather was English, so the doll should be wearing a British uniform but instead it has a German World War I military uniform She agrees to run tests. 

The story now skips ahead to 1939 Berlin where Hanna Roth finds a small wooden doll in a back cupboard of her father, Franz's  Auguststrasse antique shop. He recounts to her the story of how he came to have the doll. Best friends, Franz, son of a Jewish shop keeper and Max Reinholz, a Christian, were serving together at Ypres, in 1918. Tasked with getting the bodies of their German comrades from No Man's Land, they encounter two English soldiers, Charles and Ned who were also attempting to recover the bodies of dead soldiers. Ned and Charles die while Franz is shot in the shoulder. While searching Ned's body, Max finds the soldier doll and gives it to Franz. After returning home, Franz repainted the soldier doll giving it a German uniform but then hid it away.

That night, Jewish shops are vandalized and Jews rounded up in what becomes Kristallnacht. Franz decides to go help his neighbour, Joseph who is being beaten by Germans. Hanna gives her father the soldier doll as a good luck talisman. But Franz and Joseph, along with many other Jews are arrested. Franz manages to bribe a guard to free Joseph who has told him that he loves Hanna. 

Back in Toronto, Elizabeth returns to the bookstore with some books to donate and tells Evan about how she believes she may have found the lost soldier doll mentioned in Margaret Merriweather's poem. At first Evan is shocked and hurt, but Elizabeth tells him that she really didn't know about the soldier doll she found only days ago until he mentioned Margaret Merriweather's poetry. Evan wonders if Margaret Merriweather is still alive. An internet search reveals she is and living in London. He encourages Elizabeth to contact Margaret through her publisher. 

From this point on, Elizabeth's effort to uncover the origin and history of the doll is interwoven with the stories of how the doll was passed from Franz to various people throughout the 20th century. Franz never returns, instead being deported to a work camp. In 1944, Franz, still in a camp, Terezin (also known as Theresienstadt) in Czechoslovakia, and still in possession of the doll, gives it to twelve-year-old Eva Goodman in the hopes that it will bring her good luck and that she will survive. Franz encourages Eva to fight to stay alive, that the Americans and Russians are coming soon. She tells Franz she has named the soldier doll, Piotr. Sadly, Eva's parents are on the deportation list as Terezin is emptied ahead of the Red Cross visit to make it seem like an idyllic camp.

In Toronto 2007, the tests results come in. The wood of soldier doll is likely from southwestern England in the early twentieth century. However, the boots have been repainted in the last fifty years using paint that has come from Asia. Dr. McLeod tells Elizabeth that it appears the soldier doll has travelled from England to Germany and then on to Asia. She asks her what her plans are for the doll and suggests that publicizing the find might help. Elizabeth states that her plan is to return the soldier doll to Margaret Merriweather.

In Da Nang, Vietnam, Mike Stepanek has a soldier doll in his pocket. Mike is a squad leader for his platoon, which is searching the jungle for Viet Cong. His mother, who got the doll from the nuns at an orphanage in Prague before she fled Czechoslovakia, gave the soldier doll to him as a memento. While searching a Vietnamese village, Mike is horrified by the effects of the war on the villagers and when a small girl begs for food, he impulsively hands her the soldier doll. 

Years later, in 2001 in Toronto Canada, a young university student, Alex Cameron home sick from school,  watches television with his father as the twin towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan are hit by planes and then learns that the Pentagon has also been attacked. Alex's mother, Thuy is due to fly to Kansas City. She calls and tells them that she is fine but that her flight has landed in Chicago and she's going to attempt to drive home. While packing for university Alex finds the soldier doll his mother, Thuy let him have when he was a child. Thuy was a Vietnamese refugee who came to Canada in 1975. The soldier doll was given to her by an American soldier in her village. The war was something Thuy did not like to talk about and his father, a draft dodger from America told him not to press her for more details. 

Alex, takes the soldier doll with him to his university residence. He finds himself becoming more interested in the Middle East political situation so when a friend tells him about free pizza at some army thing, Alex decides to attend. However, Alex finds learning the truth about what is really going on in Afghanistan difficult. The army recruiter talks about the oppression of women in Afghanistan while his roommate Jonathan believes the Americans are simply protecting their access to oil. Deeply conflicted and idealistic while wanting to fight for freedom, Alex enlists against his parents wishes and goes to Afghanistan. In a moment of anger, furious that his parents do not support his decision and no one comes to see him off, he tosses the doll into the street in Toronto. 

Just as Elizabeth and her parents are preparing to travel to England to meet the elderly Margaret Merriweather, tragedy strikes Elizabeth's family. Unexpectedly, the soldier doll brings comfort to her, by connecting her with someone from its past who helps her to come to an important realization about life.

Discussion  

Soldier Doll is excellent novel that explores the theme of war through the various wars of the twentieth century. Author Jennifer Gold uses a small soldier doll to tie together major conflicts over the period of the last one hundred years beginning with World War I and ending with the conflict in Afghanistan. The soldier doll travels from the English countryside, to France, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Vietnam, and finally Toronto. Along the way it offers hope and comfort to those suffering from war. 

Soldier Doll explores the long reaching effects of war on families regardless of country or era through the narratives of Meg, Franz, Eva, Mike, Thuy, all survivors of war. In each conflict, the horror, degradation, suffering and loss experienced Elizabeth and her mother too are survivors of war, having lost their father and husband. After learning her father has been killed in Afghanistan, Elizabeth doesn't care anymore about the soldier doll, but Mike Stepanek tells Elizabeth, "It's hard to be the one who lives". Elizabeth finds "it hard to understand how, when her father was gone, she was expected to continue on, to recreate something like the life they'd had before, only with him missing."  She realizes that this is what many people experience in war, the guilt of having survived. They must learn to go on living, not only for those around them, but also to prove the instigators of war wrong. They must have hope. In Elizabeth's life, the unborn child her mother carries, is a symbol of the future and of this hope.

This theme of hope is also present earlier in the novel in the narrative of Eva who after losing her mother and father and her best friend Ilona to deportation to a death camp, does not want to sing when the Red Cross comes to Terezin. But Adam, one of the children initially set against them cooperating with the Nazi's to put on this concert, tells her, "It has to do with hope, I think. If we sing, we have hope, still. And if we have hope, we might survive."  Eva does survive. As does Mike Stepanek. As does the little girl, Thuy, who was given the soldier doll by Mike. The soldier doll also survives and represents all those who survive war, scarred and repainted by the circumstances they lived through.

The ethics of war and when it is justified to fight a war are explored through the conversation between two of the characters, Alex's parents, Don and Thuy. Don is a pacifist who escaped the Vietnam War draft by fleeing to America and he believes "War is never the answer....It's never the reasonable path." However, Thuy who has lived through the Vietnam War states "No one ever wants to go to war... But sometimes you have no choice. Sometimes you have to fight evil with a little bit of evil." This surprises Don because he believes that Thuy, having experienced the suffering war causes, should feel differently. However, Thuy explains "Not every war is the same...What if the Americans hadn't fought the Nazis in World War II?"

Another aspect of war  Soldier Doll explores is the complicated factors that are involved in enlisting to fight in a war. In Meg's opening narrative, Ned doesn't want to go to war but it is the honourable thing to do. He will be judged a coward, given a white feather if he doesn't enlist, despite the fact that it is obvious to him and Meg that he is still not fully recovered from his pneumonia. The Great War saw many men pressured into enlisting, and many others shot for "deserting", convicted of cowardice. This was especially true as the war dragged on, and few men survived.  In Mike's narrative, he tells Elizabeth that sometimes the right thing to do isn't always clear. The first to be drafted, years later Mike acknowledges that his son can't understand why he went to Vietnam. "But it wasn't so simple. I wasn't sure what the right thing to do was. I don't think the right thing was that clear. I guess it never is, not in a war, really."

Soldier Doll is well written, cohesive despite the many narratives, with a poignant ending. It would have been nice to have a map at the end of the novel chronicling all the locations the soldier doll traveled. Unfortunately, the unimaginative cover is likely not to engage the intended audience of teen readers. Which is truly unfortunate as this is novel not to be missed. Some sexual references in the story.

Book Details:
The Soldier Doll by Jennifer Gold
Toronto: Second Story Press       2014
277 pp.