Fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Bryant is not happy. She's had to leave all her friends behind and move across the country for her dad's job in the military. One hot summer evening during her first week in her new city, she's out killing time at a local garage sale when she spots a little soldier doll amid the junk. She thinks only that it might be a good last-minute birthday gift for her dad, who's about to ship out to Afghanistan. She doesn't realize that it might be a missing (and very valuable) historical artifact. With the help of Evan, the cute guy she's just met at a local used book store, Elizabeth discovers that the doll might be THE soldier doll: the inspiration for a famous World War I poem of the same name.
Elizabeth's story is interwoven with the amazing, tumultuous story of the soldier doll itself. Fashioned with love by a father for his only child in England years ago, we follow the doll back to England during World War I, then on to Nazi Germany in the 1930s, a Czech concentration camp during World War II, Vietnam in 1970 and through the aftermath of 9/11.