Who Wrote the Best-Selling Novel of the 19th Century?

Contact: Pauline Wolff 317-844-6070

If you said Charles Dickens or Mark Twain, guess again.

The novelist whose book has been in print for more than 100 years was born in middle America.

His father was governor of a state better known for basketball than for books.

His novel featured a chariot race that was immortalized on film by Charlton Heston.

As an adult, Lew Wallace became a Civil War general, statesman, inventor, artist and the author of the best-selling novel Ben-Hur.

But, long before Ben-Hur made him world-famous, Lew Wallace was a boy, a boy who played hooky from school on a regular basis and earned a suspension more than once. A boy who drew portraits of his school mates with a magic pencil" instead of tending to his arithmetic lesson.

Learn the details of these and the many other adventures of the young man who created the most exciting chariot race in history in the new Volume 3 of the Young Patriots Series, Lew Wallace, Boy Writer, by Martha E. Schaaf. Issued by Indiana publisher Patria Press, Inc., this latest offering chronicles the childhood of the author of a best-selling novel that has been in print for more than 100 years.

Young Lewis Wallace loved spending time near the Wabash River, but was the despair of his teachers. He preferred to read and draw rather than sit in the schoolroom, and his father, attorney and one-time Governor of Indiana, agonized that his son would never learn a trade.

Lew Wallace, Boy Writer tells the story of Lews growth from a confused and rebellious youth to the creative writer and heroic soldier he became. Kids will cheer for Lews dramatic rescue of his baby brother from beneath the wheels of the family carriage, share his joy at discovering the world of books, and feel his pain at the punishment he suffered in the schoolroom.

Our Young Patriots Series puts the story back into history," explains publisher Florrie Binford Kichler. Children like to read about children like themselves, and Lew Wallaces struggle to mature is something all kids can identify with."

The Young Patriots titles were originally published more than thirty years ago as part of the Childhood of Famous Americans Series.Ò Patria Press is re-introducing the books with newly designed covers and new illustrations while retaining the classic text that children have been reading for two generations.

Our mission is to hook kids on history and get them reading. We hope that parents and educators who loved these books in their original form will introduce the 21st century versions to their own children," Ms. Kichler remarks.

Volume 3 in the Young Patriots Series, Lew Wallace, Boy Writer, by Martha E. Schaaf has just been released. Volume 1, Amelia Earhart, Young Air Pioneer by Jane Moore Howe, and Volume 2, the story of our ninth President, William Henry Harrison, Young Tippecanoe by Howard Peckham, are also available. All titles in the Series are issued in both hardback ($14.95) and paperback ($9.95) editions and are illustrated.