Lorenzo's Secret Mission — Gloria Velasquez

Armed with a long knife, flint-lock musket, and his father’s medical bag, fifteen-year-old Lorenzo Bannister sets off to fulfill his father’s last, deathbed wish.  Lorenzo joins a secret flatboat operation delivering much-needed medicine and gunpowder to George Washington’s army, leading the reader on a romping ride from the docks of New Orleans to the battlefields of the American Revolution.Trained as a medic by his father, Lorenzo makes his way up the Mississippi and the Ohio rivers, witnessing the horrors of slavery and political warfare.  Constantly hoping for a better future, Lorenzo recounts his adventures, including his involvement with famous people that he meets, including George Washington and Bernardo de Galvez, the Spanish governor of Louisiana who helped the American rebels.This action-packed historical novel for young people tells the story of the Spanish contribution to the American Revolution.  Filled with adventure and the questions of freedom that plagued the beginning of the United States, the reader cannot help but be captured by Lorenzo’s zeal for life and his crusade for a better future not only for himself, but for the people that he loves.