The Tale of Truthwater Lake
In the too-hot, climate-changed summer of 2032, Polly and her brother are packed off to a favourite aunt who lives by an artificial lake, a reservoir which flooded the Devon valley and village of Syndercombe in 1952. Polly fears deep water, but when she ventures out into the hot night for a cautious swim, she finds an old door handle at the lake’s edge. As the latch turns, she is dragged down into the lake and into 1952 to relive the last months of the drowned village. She becomes Nellie, a foster child, whose dream is to swim the English Channel.
Nellie’s life changes—but not in the way we expect—when a swimming celebrity arrives at the Syndercombe Lido to select a young swimmer for a media-sponsored Channel swim. Nellie and her best friend Lena must plot and plan to help the chosen swimmer achieve the Channel swim and make all their different dreams come true. The weight of the storytelling is with Nellie, as she also negotiates different kinds of separation and loss, trying to keep Lena with her as Syndercombe collapses into water. When Nellie’s story arrives in 2032, Polly’s story reasserts itself. We understand the lessons she has learned from being Nellie and about different kinds of courage.
The thread linking Polly and Nellie is the confidence to be where it feels lonely and dangerous. Nellie’s story gives life to a community which lost its home in the creation of a reservoir, so the irreversible consequences of environmental change also link these children past and present. The main characters are from dissimilar cultures, but their stories tell how their dreams and vulnerabilities are the same. This is relevant storytelling about children’s resilience, which conveys the magic of time travel and of true friendship.
