Rodman Philbrick’s The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg (2009) is a historical fiction novel for middle-grade readers. It won the Newbery Honor award for its story about a young boy’s travels across Civil War America in search of his lost brother. The 2011 e-book edition is the basis for this study guide.

Plot Summary

Homer Figg, 12 years old in 1863, lives on a farm in Maine with his older brother, Harold. They’re in the care of their mean and angry Uncle Squinton “Squint” Leach, who works them hard, barely feeds them, and locks them up in the barn at night. Harold protects Homer from Squint’s worst behavior, and one day he saves his brother from a beating by knocking Squint into a pig sty. Squint retaliates by having Harold arrested and forced into the Union army. Harold is 17, too young to serve, but Squint insists the boy is 20, and they take Harold away. Homer decides to chase after Harold and save him.

Immediately, Homer is kidnapped by bounty hunters Stink and Smelt, who are searching for escaped enslaved people that they can return to the South for cash. They hold hostage a Black man named Samuel Reed—a conductor on the Underground Railroad—and plan to kill him. Smelt threatens to kill Homer unless he helps them find runaway enslaved people, who he believes are hidden in the Brewster home—a station on the Underground Railroad that helps enslaved people escape to freedom. Brewster knows about Smelt’s plan and tells Homer to meet with Smelt that night as if nothing’s amiss while Brewster devises a plan to defeat the bounty hunters.

Mr. Brewster books passage for Homer to New York City, where the lad can continue his search for Harold. At the New York docks, Homer is rescued by Professor Fenton Fleabottom, director of the Carnival of Miracles, a traveling circus and medicine show that entertains Union soldiers and sells them a cure-all elixir that’s mainly whiskey. Fleabottom offers Homer a job in his show as the Amazing Pig Boy, so that he can stay near the army and continue his search for Harold. Homer accepts and soon becomes a sensation as the snarling, snapping Pig Boy during the Carnival’s nightly performances. Homer bonds with Minerva, the tattooed lady, and with the two tumbler-jugglers, Bern and Tally. They become his informal family.

One afternoon, as the Carnival wagons roll toward the next town, a Union observation balloon, broken from its moorings, floats past. Bern, Tally, and Homer chase after the balloon’s dangling anchor and snare it in a stand of trees. As Fleabottom chats with the balloon’s pilot, plying him for information about troop movements, Union cavalrymen ride up and arrest Fleabottom as a Confederate spy. They try to arrest the others, but Homer scurries up the trees into the balloon’s basket, cuts the anchor rope, and floats away. Homer crash-lands behind rebel lines near the town of Gettysburg and is imprisoned in a barn, where wounded Confederate soldiers, screaming and dying, are brought for surgery and amputations. Homer escapes on a horse that gallops directly across the battlefield, through gunfire and explosions, to the Union lines. Miraculously unhurt, Homer is sent to the rear, where he asks soldiers about Harold and learns that his brother’s regiment will arrive in the morning.

At dawn, Homer finds his brother in a prison wagon, but regimental colonel Joshua Chamberlain offers amnesty to any prisoners who’ll fight, and Harold accepts. Chamberlain orders a last-ditch bayonet charge, and his men rush down the hill toward the enemy. Homer follows Harold, shouting for him to take cover. He retrieves a revolver from a dying officer and shoots at the ground, hoping to scare Harold, but the bullet strikes a rock and a chip flies off and slices into Harold’s leg, felling him. Meanwhile, the charge succeeds and the Southern soldiers retreat. Harold’s leg gets amputated, but he doesn’t blame Homer. The two work their way back to Maine, where Mr. Brewster adopts them and makes Harold director of the gemstone mine. Homer learns that his mistakes are his teachers, and he honors them by marching bravely toward his tomorrows.