Life has tossed some overwhelming hurdles at
thirteen-year-old Jeremy Isherwood in the last few months. He feels doomed. For
starters, not only is he the shortest in his family, he is the shortest in his new
class. He is also doomed to a life of playing snakes and ladders with Neenie,
his nutty and forgetful old grandmother. Jem’s family has had to move to the
daggy old Isherwood house. It’s a far cry from living out on the mango farm,
sixty kilometres south of Darwin, where life was happy.
But when the mango market becomes oversupplied and times
get tough, Jem’s Dad must work in the mines, away from home for weeks at a
time. A bad mining accident, in which he loses a leg and becomes confined to a
wheelchair, has thrown the family into crisis. They’ve sold up the farm and
moved in with Neenie, where the family dynamic has reached breaking point. Dad
is not coping with his exercises and has lost his joie-de-vivre. Jem’s older
sister, Maddy, spends most of her time either sneaking off to see her new
boyfriend or slamming doors and arguing with her mother. Thank goodness for
Jem’s dog and the horses. At least Jem can escape the tension for a while and
ride down to the beach with his younger brother Tyler and Tyler’s friend Zac,
from next door.
When it seems the family can bear no more, a visitor
arrives out of the blue. It is Jem’s great aunt, Ella, who has returned from
sailing around the world. When Jem’s Dad must go to Adelaide for two weeks to
see his specialist, Ella offers to take Jem, Maddy, Tyler and Zac out on her
yacht, Freya. Little do the four know that they are about to embark on an
adventure they will never forget, and that in helping Ella solve a curious
hundred-year-old mystery, they will fear for their lives.
Joanne van Os is a master of the adventure story. With
its adroitly crafted plotting and endearing characters, children will find The Secret of the Lonely Isles hard to
put down. It indulges the archetypal childhood dream of searching for buried
treasure and negotiating with riddle and risk to find it. Packed with intrigue,
incident and peril on the high seas, van Os has produced a meticulously researched
story that will engage, educate and stimulate the imagination of all who read
it. The story’s verisimilitude and accuracy are, no doubt, in part, a result of
van Os’s sailing acumen and her first-hand experience of sailing around the top
end of Australia and surrounding islands. Highly recommended.
Random House 2011
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