Island of Spies - Report Info
The Story! Island of Spies!
Twelve-year-old Stick Lawson and her best friends Rain and Neb – the Dime Novel Kids – live on Hatteras Island, an isolated, white sand island where life moves steady as the tides.
The year is 1942. As wannabe detectives, the Dimes long for a prime assignment from the FBI. As the strangest kids on Hatteras Island, they crave the respect and money that come with solving a huge mystery. So far, the FBI isn't writing back. And war is coming.
When Nazi U-boats begin torpedoing US ships just offshore, the island is on its own. And so are the Dime Novel Kids – even when suspicious newcomers step ashore.
In this book, based on real-life Nazi U-boat attacks off North Carolina's Outer Banks in World War II, Stick, Neb and Rain face more mysteries than they ever wished for. To solve them, they'll risk more than they ever imagined.
What Inspired Island of Spies?
I first bumped into the backstory for Island of Spies during a family trip to Hatteras Island when I was about nine years old. As I walked along the white sand beach with my father, I spotted a large, black--what?
“That's oil,” Daddy said. “In World War II, German U-Boats sat right out there, torpedoing our ships. The ships still sit on the bottom of the sea, releasing oil for the ocean to churn ashore. That's our secret history. So are the spies.”
A secret history? U-Boats? Spies? The hook was set.
Author's Bio
I was born in Jacksonville NC and grew up on a family farm in eastern North Carolina. I decided to become a writer when I was in first grade.
I love history, which made Island of Spies fun to write. I love seeing the wild ponies on the island, just like Neb. I'm always fascinated by shipwrecks, like the one that brought Rain's mother ashore. And I loves spy stories, mystery and adventure – more reasons this book was fun to write.
For more info about me, click here.
Soon after, when my family climbed the Hatteras Lighthouse, I stepped into what becomes, in Island of Spies, the office of our heroes--Stick, Neb, and Rain—the Dime Novel Kids. I saw what narrator Stick Lawson sees when she looks out the window, scanning for U-Boats and spies. The sparkling blue Atlantic Ocean, white dunes, wide beaches. And on the other side of the narrow island, the sapphire waters of the wide Pamlico Sound.
The story kept reeling me in – through beach trips, and years later through an interview with a man who grew up in the lighthouse compound, through old-timers' stories of blackout curtains and sinking ships, through research, museum trips, and more beach trips.
Some stories want to be written. This was one of them. It wouldn't let me go.
© 2022 Sheila Turnage, Inc