Island of Spies by Sheila Turnage

Best friends twelve-year-old Neb, ten-year-old Rain and twelve-year-old Stick form the Dime Novel Kids, (the Dimes) a detective agency on Hatteras Island, off the coast of North Carolina. Their headquarters is at the top of the abandoned Hatteras Lighthouse. They hope to garner more business and become FBI agents some day but for now their current investigations include Tommy Wilkins who steals anything left out and Postmistress Agnes Wainwright who they believe is a spy.

Nebuchadnezzar Alfonzo MacKenzie lives with his mother Irma and his father Noah who used to be the keeper of the Hatteras lighthouse but who has been unwell for some time. Neb follows the rules of the Boy Scouts which he consults from the 1918 handbook. Neb has two sisters, Ruth and Naomi.

Rain lives with her mother who has been given the name Miss Jonah because they washed up on the Hatteras during a violent storm. Stick's mother saved Miss Jonah's life by helping her out of the water just as she gave birth to Rain. The whereabouts of Rain's father are unknown. Rain is of mixed race with her father being Black and her mother white and they are not welcome on the Hatteras. Rain and her mother live in a huge wine casket that washed up on the beach. Rain is a budding artist who paints with bold colours.

Stick's full name is Sarah Stickley Lawson, "apprentice scientist and pre-FBI agent" who lives with her  sister, sixteen-year-old Faye who is dating Reed, her mother Ada who is the island healer, and her father who sails along the coast bringing in supplies for the family store, Titus & Son General Store. The store is run by her grandfather Titus, affectionately known as Grand. He is a World War I vet who seems to have a romantic interest in the Postmistress Agnes Wainwright.

The story opens, January 12, 1942 with Tommy's younger brother Otto visiting the Dimes and attempting to extort them to pay him protection money for when the war reaches America. Everyone is nervous because the U.S. is now at war with Japan after they bombed Pearl Harbor in December of 1941. This also means that America is at war with Germany and that as in World War I, U-boats will probably be patrolling the Eastern Atlantic coast.

The Dimes refuse Otto's "offer" and instead tell him they are determined to solve the mystery of who is stealing Neb's lunch every day.

Stick's Papa arrives home from his trip along the coast, in his sloop with the red sails, along with his crew, Onslow Banks and a Black man from Pea Island named Richard Oscar. He's been gone three weeks and brought home an odd assortment of goods much to the consternation of Grand. Stick's father plans to sail immediately the next morning to bring in more supplies before the war really ramps up and rationing begins. However, her Mama refuses to let him go until Sunday.

On Sunday January 18, Stick's Papa leaves to sail down the coast. Stick, Neb and Rain take to staking out the store, while Faye confronts Tommy Wilkins about his brother Otto stealing Neb's lunch and "shaking people down". Just as Reed is about to shoot pool, there is a tremendous boom that cracks the store window and rattles the tins on the shelves. Everyone races to the shore, to see a tanker burning and then explode, sending oil and debris into the ocean. Grand orders the family men to take their people home while the single men patrol the beach. At home Stick's Mama tells them the Germans are hunting boats, not people but that their lights have to stay off.

In the morning they learn that there were no survivors from the blast and that two more ships were sunk last night by U-boats. The Dime Novel Kids return to school where their teacher, Miss Pope talks about the war, explaining that the attack on Pearl Harbor has decimated the U.S.'s ability to fight off the German submarines. Both Neb and Stick wonder if there might be Nazi spies in their community. And so they begin staking out various member of their village: Miss Agnes, the Ringers or outsiders who have come to play baseball for the Knnakeet team - Carl Miller and his cousin Ralph and two new travelers, Julia Cornwall and her brother Dirk, artists who are staying in Miss Agnes' cottage.

As the U-boat action ramps up and Stick's father is soon long overdue, the Dime Novel Kids work to figure out who is a spy. Their keen detective work begins eventually brings them into the path of a group of German spies and double-agents and plenty of danger.

Discussion

Island of Spies is an enjoyable novel, set on Hatteras Island, off of North Carolina. The events in the novel cover the span of time from January to August of 1942, as World War II ramps up and U-boats begin to hunt down and destroy American vessels attempting to supply Britain. 

The story is told by twelve-year-old Sarah "Stick" Lawson, a young girl who looks at the world through the lens of science and who frequently draws facts from the encyclopedias she reads. She and her friends have formed their own detective agency based on Dime Novels that they have read and draw tips from. The novel opens with a chapter which mentions that there are "three graves hidden in the heart of Buxton Woods, all three held down with ballast stones painted white.We aren't saying who's resting in those graves and who's not...All we're saying is there's three graves if you know how to find them." What follows are the events that led to those three graves.

The pacing in the first half of the novel is somewhat slow as the author builds her main characters and introduces a slew of new ones who come to the island as strangers. The main characters who form the Dimes are interesting and gradually developed in the first half; from the smart and outspoken Stick who is a "pre-famous scientist", to the artistic mixed-race Rain who in the end learns the real names of her parents. to quiet, intelligent Neb who lives in the Hatteras Lighthouse and is trying to deal with the possibility that his father may not live long. Turnage has crafted these characters from people she has encountered in her own life. 

The new characters add to the developing mystery: the "Ringers", Carl and Ralph who are supposedly players brought in by a rival team to play baseball,  and the Artists Julia and her brother Dirk whose family in has been sent to Auschwitz, are considered by the Dimes to be possible German spies. 

Things pick up when the school is destroyed by the blast from a ship that was targeted too close to shore by a German U-boat in March of 1942. With school now out for the year, the Dimes ramp up their detective work, staking out Miss Agnes' "lair". They eventually learn Miss Agnes's true identity and agree to work with her.

The novel's most entertaining point occurs when the Dimes attend the dance at the Oceanside Club at Nag's Head. Turnage's descriptions of disguises and events are enormously funny and delightful. But it is after this point that events become darker and more fast-paced. Stick's Papa is missing at sea, some of the locals begin to turn against Miss Jonah and Rain, and as the Dimes uncover more clues and a secret code, they find themselves in a life-threatening situation that requires all the ingenuity and courage they can muster.

Turnage has crafted a unique historical fiction novel based on the real life threat posed by U-boats to the Eastern seaboard during World War II. This forms the framework for her story of a small community trying to adjust to the changes war brings about while also dealing with old prejudices and expectations. The community struggles with the prejudice towards people of colour when they accuse Miss Jonah a shipwreck survivor who has a mixed-race child of being a thief and a spy. In wartime the expectation that women will continue to be at home is challenged by the women of the community who show up at the boys and men only security meeting and when Faye organizes her Security Brigade. It is the women who ultimately save the day in this story.

As she mentions in her informative From The Author To You, Turnage "uses a lot of spy codes, lingo and gizmos - all actually used by spies." making Island of Spies appealing to middle grade readers. This author's note at the back, lays out what is fiction and real history in the novel.

Although Island of Spies takes a bit of time to get going, it's worth the read, filled the mystery of three unknown graves in a woods, twists and turns, loads of spy-craft, quirky characters and a little-known historical context as the framework. A map showing the location of  Hatteras Island and possible shipwrecks from U-boat attacks would have added just that little bit extra!

Book Details:

Island of Spies by Sheila Turnage
New York: Dial Books for Young Readers  
374 pp.