Rosemary Hayes has been writing wonderful historical adventure novels for children for many years, but here she goes the other way through time, creating a story that lives in an imagined future history.
Flora lives on a small island off the Scottish coast, ruled over by an authoritarian council with guards shadowing and spying on their behalf. She and her fellow young people have been brought up to believe that the rest of the world was wiped out by a plague, and modern communication technology wiped out with them. But Flora’s simple life, sharing a remote cottage with her parents, seeing friends and grandparents, has shockingly been interrupted. Her parents have disappeared, and in their place Flora now has a live-in guardian, Ramona, whose boyfriend is one of those guards. It seems that the council fear that Flora is going to cause them trouble, or maybe be a useful tool for them, if a rumoured uprising by rebels takes place. What can Flora do?
Events fast develop into a tense adventure that sees Flora discovering rebels, being captured, on the run, and then heading for days over the sea to a mainland where …. well, you’ll have to read it to find out what she discovers!
This is a story that gives plenty of food for thought. Who is to be trusted? How would we behave if faced with threats to ourselves and our loved ones? What would life be like without the means to easily communicate with others? How can we judge what is and isn’t truth?
A fast gallop of a story that resolves positively, making an excellent read for top of primary school, early secondary school aged children to enjoy.
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