Twelve-year-old Petra (Pet) Zimmermann Smith lives with her father Frederick, her mother Angela Helene whom they call Mutti as she is from Germany and her fifteen-year-old sister Magda (Mags). Pet's father operates the lighthouse located near the village of Stonegate so their family lives in the adjacent cottage attached to the lighthouse.
Their lighthouse has always been known as the Castle because it is surrounded by four granite megaliths known as the Daughters of Stone which look like buttresses or guard towers. The megaliths are believed to have been used by the druids. Pet's father once told them the legend of the stones. A fishing vessel named the Aurora failed to return to the harbour one foggy night. The daughters of the four men on board went each night to the clifftop to light a signal fire to guide the Aurora home. People believed the ship was lost to the Wyrm, a sandbank just offshore known to shift and sink ships. The last night of their vigil, the daughters sang a song to the sea, offering up their souls in exchange for the return of the Aurora. They sang all night and at dawn a ghostly boat returned with the men. In return for bringing home the Aurora, the Wyrm and they misty tentacles of fog turned the four daughters to stone. This story both entrances and terrifies Pet.In the Autumn of 1939 Mag's comes home one day with a swollen eye and cut fists. She has been in a fight at school because people have been taunting her about Mutti. With the start of the war with Germany people in England are suspicious of anyone who is German.
Pet's father receives an order from the government to paint the lighthouse green, camouflaging it from the air. Not long after this, Pet and her family are frightened to see so many planes flying over the lighthouse. They seek shelter in the coal cellar of the lighthouse cottage and while there, Pet discovers a photograph of her parents wedding which she decides to keep. The picture interests Pet because no one looks happy and there are only two guests at the ceremony.
Gas masks arrive in the village and everyone is called to the village hall where Mrs. Baron the headmistress and magistrate at the court in Dover, demonstrates how to use them. Mrs. Baron announces that she will also be the Air Raid Precaution warden for the village.
Pet begins to notice that her sister Mags seems to be acting strangely. She also notices strange goings on in the village. Her father seems distracted when aiding a ship with the lighthouse foghorn and the optic light. Then Pet discovers Mutti leaving the cottage early one morning, and discovers she is following someone else.
In the Spring of 1940, Hitler invades France by way of the Netherlands and Belgium. The real war has now begun. One morning Pet and her family wake up to a fire in the village; someone has set fire to the village hall which was being used as a base for the Local Defense Volunteers and the Scout hut where equipment was being stored.
But then one day Mutti is summoned to a tribunal. Because she was born in Germany, Mutti was considered to be an "enemy alien". Every enemy alien had to be categorized according to the risk they were considered to pose; Category A aliens were a serious threat and locked up in internment camps, Category B were not locked up but were restricted on where they could live and work, Category C aliens were minimal risk and faced no sanctions.At the tribunal, Mutti is declared at Category A alien when a set of maps and charts are presented as being drawn by her. Despite Mutti's denials and little proof they are actually hers, she is sentenced to an internment camp.
In shock, Pet and Mags decide they must prove Mutti's innocence. But their investigations lead no where and Pet finds herself doubting everyone around her. But a shocking confession from Mutti in a letter and a stunning revelation overheard by Pet throws her world into chaos. What is the truth and will Pet's family ever be the same?
Discussion
Our Castle By The Sea is the story of a young girl, afraid and struggling to understand the world around her who overcomes her own fears to try to save her family from events beyond her control. Strange's novel is unrelenting in the tragedies the Smith family experience making it unusual for juvenile fiction. There is no happy ending here, but there is hope.
The coming difficulties for Pet's family are foreshadowed by her discovery of her parent's wedding photograph, hidden in the Castle's coal cellar. The photograph reveals a wedding that was not filled with joy and attended by only two other people. It suggests a troubled past that Pet doesn't know about and an uncertain future.
Strange weaves many historical details into her story which spans the time period of a year from Autumn 1939 to Autumn 1940. The war in Europe is just beginning. It's been only twenty years since the last world war which was supposed to end all wars. The Germans are in France and the threat of invasion is very real. The coast of France is a mere twenty miles away. The people are afraid and suspicious of anyone German. With little due process, anyone of German ancestry deemed "dangerous" is incarcerated in a camp. Pet notes how the war begins to change people so they turn on neighbours and friends, when her mother is one of those sent to an internment camp.
"...They were our friends. People from church, the village shopkeepers and fishermen, the parents of the children we had grown up with. But something had changed them. The war. The enemy plane. The things they had heard on the wireless and read in the newspapers. The rumors, the whispers. They were angry. And they were very, very frightened."
Another event mentioned is the evacuation of children from areas considered dangerous such as the coast to villages further inland. The evacuation of Dunkirk is also incorporated into the storyline. When Pet's family learns that boats of all kinds are needed to rescue the trapped troops on the coast of France, Mags is determined to go. But their father insists that she not, although in the end Mags disobeys him. Instead he goes and is lost in the evacuation. Strange touches on all of these real events in her Historical Note at the back of the novel.
Strange incorporates the the legend of the Daughters of the Stone and the Wyrm throughout her story. The legend is presented early in the story and we see that it has a profound effect on Pet. She often dreams the Wyrm is pursuing her right up to the lantern room but never quite makes it. This motif of a shifting sea monster that is after her and her family represents Pet's fears associated with the war. She equates the war with the sea monster that haunts her dreams. "This war is a sea monster, I thought. Sometimes it destroys things violently and openly, and sometimes its tentacles squeeze in through the cracks of normal life, and it strangles us silently."
When Pa and Mags leave to help in the evacuation of Dunkirk, Pet keeps watch on the clifftop. But when it seems like they are not going to return, Pet believes like the Daughters of Stone, she must sing to bring them home."This was the moment that I had always known about in my bones, ever since Pa first told me the legend of the stones. This was the moment in which I would finally become part of this ancient story. The sky wrapped around me, gray as fate, enveloping me together with the stones and the cold-smoking sea." As she sings, a boat arrives in the harbor but it is Kipper and Mags and not her Pa. Later on Pet thinks, "I thought about the lullaby that I had sung to the sea as I prayed for Mags and Pa. I had felt so sure that some kind of magic was working...Just enough to bring Mags safely home, I thought. But not enough for my Pa." Pet continues to wonder, "Was there a price to be paid or not? Would I end up being turned to stone?"
After her accident on the clifftop which leaves her paralyzed from the waist down, Pet considers herself to be a Daughter of Stone. Now she sits in her wheelchair in the lantern room. "I was a Daughter of Stone now -- so, from up in the lantern room, from first light to twilight, I did what the Daughters of Stone do: I kept watch over our sky and sea." During her watch one night Pet someone enters the lighthouse, knocking out Mags and entering into the lantern room. At first Pet believes it is the Wyrm coming finally to claim her. In reality it is Mrs. Baron who turns out to be a traitor and a Nazi. Drawing on the legend, Pet thinks, "In that moment, I was aware of the Daughters of Stone outside on the clifftop, sparkling darkly, calling to me as one of their own - warning me, giving me strength." Mrs. Baron reveals much to Pet, including that she is in the lantern room to aid in the beginning of the Nazi invasion. With all the strength, courage and self-sacrifice of the Daughters of Stone, Pet helps to thwart Mrs. Baron's plans. Pet has been transformed from a girl, "...small and unnoticeable and frightened. A girl whose mother was locked away and whose father was lost at sea, who battled with monsters braving the raging skies and the darkness of the night..." Pet is now "Defender of the White Cliffs, Dragon Slayer, Daughter of Stone"
Our Castle By the Sea a mixture of historical fiction and adventure, a coming of age story with a thrilling climax. And despite Pet having suffered many losses, she demonstrates her resiliency, courage and maturity in her hope for the future, despite the ongoing war. She grows into a strong heroine through adversity.
This novel would definitely have benefited from lovely pencil illustrations. Sadly, illustration in juvenile fiction is mostly lacking today, but a good artist helps tell the story and fuel the imagination of the reader. Nevertheless, Our Castle By the Sea is a well-written novel that historical fiction fans will very much appreciate.
Book Details:
Our Castle By The Sea by Lucy Strange
New York: Chicken House 2019
319 pp.
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