The Treasure of Savage Island

Lenore Hart captures the midatlantic marshlands wonderfully in this novel of piracy, slavery, and adolescent dreams. Set shortly after the Revolutionary War, when the British are still very much enemies, fifteen-year-old Molly Savage and Rafe, a runaway slave, deal with lost treasure and attacking picaroons while confronting the very real limitations of their respective life situations. The setting is very real, and the characters satisfyingly solid. Midway through, I wondered at how they would find solutions to seemingly impossible problems, but the book resolved both realistically and hopefully. So many historical novels for kids focus on New England; hurrah for this book set in one of the other former colonies.