The Surrender Tree

Cuba's wars for independence from Spain, told in poems from multiple perspectives — a healer named Rosa who hides escaped slaves and wounded soldiers in the forest, a Cuban scout, a Spanish lieutenant, a child orphaned by war. Engle writes in spare, precise verse that gives each voice its own rhythm. Newbery Honor winner. The most formally accomplished middle grade novel about Cuban history and the one that most completely insists on the humanity of everyone caught in a war — the healer, the fighter, the occupier, the child. A dispatch in verse from inside three wars that shaped the Caribbean.