Island of Spies
Twelve-year-old Sarah Stickley “Stick” Lawson lives her with mom, dad, and older sister on Hatteras Island, North Carolina. Stick, her ten-year-old friend, Rain, and another friend, Neb, have formed an alliance they call Dime Novel Kids. Each Kid has special talents. Savant Stick knows more science and Latin than most adults and has memorized titles, storylines, and lessons from more than 900 numbered dime novels. She speaks and thinks like an adult. Rain, too, is a grown-up soul and a talented artist who notices things only an artist would. Neb is a master at figuring out patterns and decoding secret messages. The Kids try to solve local mysteries, such as who’s been stealing school lunches, and yearn for FBI attention someday.
The surrounding Atlantic, with its unpredictable weather, tricky shoals, and strong tides, has long been a ship graveyard. Now in January 1942, German U-Boats sink coastal water traffic. Some torpedoes and U-Boat cannon shells even explode ashore. Suddenly the Dime Novel Kids have big quarry: German spies. The island’s post mistress, two tourists who fled from Austria, and several young men all behave strangely or seem out of place. They pull the Kids into complicated and harrowing adventures.
The story is told entirely in Stick’s sometimes cryptic, always clever, and adult-sounding point of view. Latin phrases and word origins, references to many Dime Novels, science lessons, and catchy metaphors abound. Unfortunately, most are not needed; some were not known at that time (a hawk diving “like a heat-seeking missile”). The Kids’ heart-tugging family challenges, ugly race relations, alongside double agents, secret codes, and deadly missions are weakened by Stick constantly showing readers how much she knows.
