THE WATER CASTLE

Weaving legacy and myth into science and magic, old into new and enemies into friends, Blakemore creates an exquisite mystery.

Crystal Springs, Maine, “isn’t on the map,” but it’s still where Price, Ephraim and Brynn’s mother brings their family when their father has a stroke. The “looming stone house” with hidden floors and impossible rooms, owned by their family (the Appledores) for over a century, was once a resort that claimed its spring water had healing properties—possibly a fountain of youth. Ephraim struggles to fit in at Crystal Springs’ peculiarly overachieving school; his classmate Mallory steels herself against her mother’s recent departure and her teacher’s assignment to study Matthew Henson (“He just assumed she would want to do him, because Henson was black too”). While Mallory, Ephraim and another sixth-grader named Will unravel the castle’s secrets (each for different reasons, all serious) and confront age-old hostility among their families, a 1908 storyline unfolds: Young Nora Darling (Mallory’s relative) assists old Orlando Appledore in feverish scientific research. Peary and Henson’s Arctic expedition features in both timelines; science, history and literature references glow; Nikola Tesla visits Nora and Orlando. With keen intelligence and bits of humor, the prose slips calmly between narrative perspectives, trusting readers to pick up a revelation that Ephraim and Mallory don’t see—and it’s a doozy.

This one is special.