The Wreckers - by Iain Lawrence

The Wreckers - by Iain Lawrence

It's been said that, during the 1800s, quaint little seaside villages in Cornwall were sometimes home to people who rejoiced in the storms. People who got down on their knees and prayed to God for the driving rain and the crashing waves. "Good" townspeople who would sit on the cliffs and wait. The would wait for the ships struggling through the storms, searching for a safe harbor. Tall ships like this one [Show book cover]. When a ship was spotted, they would raise their lamps, light their fires and provide beacons that led these ships onto treacherous rocks and certain destruction. All for the chance of finding and keeping the treasures that washed ashore from the wreck.

The Isle of Skye was such a ship. Lost in a storm, she gratefully followed the lights that suddenly appeared in the black night. When she hit the rocks called The Tombstones, John Spencer, who had been travelling on board with his father for the first time, knew he would die at sea. But he made it to shore. Then, when he awoke on the beach and witnessed one of his shipmates who had also made it alive to shore, being drowned by the local villagers, John was sure he'd be killed, too. But when the whole bloodthirsty mob chased him through the countryside to a broken down block house where a legless man told him that his father was still alive, too, John discovered the will to live. The will to find his father. The will to survive this quaint little seaside town that thrived on death, destruction and the determination that there would be no survivors.
Read the Wreckers, a nasty but true part of history, and a well-told adventure by Iain Lawrence.

2001 Evergreen Award Nomination