Lucy’s father has lost his job, and to meet their restricted budget her family must move from the city to a recently inherited house in rural Iowa. While she’s unhappy with the impending change, Lucy is intrigued by a family legend that centers on her new home. In 1914, her great uncle Oscar mysteriously disappeared in the middle of the night. That wouldn’t be so unusual, perhaps, except that his sister Lavonne remembers waking up that night to see an ocean surrounding their landlocked Iowa house and Oscar pushing a rowboat out to sea. The next morning the water had vanished. Although the rowboat had reappeared without explanation a month later, Oscar’s disappearance has never been explained. Shortly after Lucy and her parents arrive in Iowa, Oscar’s old composition books turn up, holding clues to his inexplicable departure. When her own father disappears and a strange boy arrives, Lucy frantically turns to the book for answers in a fantastical adventure that keeps rolling at a fast clip, all the while firmly grounded in themes of the power of story and the bonds among family. (Ages 9–12)

Kristin Kladstrup's wonderfully transporting fantasy - featuring a ship full of orphaned pirate children, a pair of warring royals, and plenty of magic potions - is sure to thrill all those who dare turn its pages.

Oscar Martin was fourteen when he mysteriously disappeared from his Iowa farmhouse home in June 1914. His sister claimed Oscar had rowed out to sea - but how was that possible? There is no ocean in Iowa. When, nearly a century later, Lucy Martin and her parents move from their city apartment to that same farmhouse in Iowa, it is not long before Lucy discovers the strange and dangerous BOOK OF STORY BEGININGS. And it's not long before Oscar reappears in a bizarre turn of events that sends the two distant relatives on a perilous journey to save Lucy's father.

This remarkable debut fantasy novel is a thrilling page turner as well as a tribute to the writer's craft.