The Platinum Secret
In 1928, Steve Rogers found a dying man's letter in a Gloucester attic - a letter that spoke of a hundred pounds of strange, silver-colored metal buried on a lonely Hawaiian shore, and of a friend named Jim who never lived to go home. That letter is where the Hunniwell boys' adventure begins.
The Platinum Secret is the story the letter couldn't tell: what really happened to Solomon Rogers and the whaling brig Perseverance in 1815-16.
Sol Rogers is nineteen, Gloucester-born, and three months out on his first deep-water voyage when the Perseverance rounds the Horn chasing whale oil across the Pacific. He and his bunkmate Jim Tolliver are green hands trying to earn the crew's respect under a captain who trusts no one and a first mate who trusts money more than his captain. When a Pacific storm drives the brig onto the reefs off Molokai, survival becomes the only law - and in the wreck's aftermath, Sol and Jim stumble on a vein of strange, heavy, untarnishing metal in a sea cave the islanders call kapu, forbidden.
What should be a fortune becomes a curse. A fever moves through the marooned crew. The first mate's greed turns shipmates into rivals. And as the survivors dwindle, Sol and Jim make a choice that will outlive them both: hide the metal, write down where, and trust that someday, somehow, a Rogers will come looking.
Four parts, forty chapters, one long-buried promise - and the century-spanning question that opens the door straight into The Platinum Mystery: did anyone ever go back?
Nautical adventure, Whaling ship fiction, Historical adventure novel, Shipwreck survival story, Treasure hunt fiction, Boys' adventure series, Prequel novel, 19th century sea story.
Setting & era: 1815 Gloucester Massachusetts, New England whaling, Age of Sail, Molokai Hawaii, Sandwich Islands, Pacific Ocean voyage, Historical Hawaii fiction.
Plot & theme: Buried treasure, Platinum mystery, Lost letter, Marooned sailors, Mutiny at sea, Shipwreck survivors, Fever epidemic, Betrayal and greed, Loyalty and friendship, Coming-of-age at sea, Forbidden cave / kapu legend, Multi-generational mystery.
Character/series: Sol Rogers, Jim Tolliver, Captain and crew drama, Hunniwell Boys companion novel, Secret Service Rogers family origin.
Audience/genre: historical fiction, Boys' adventure fiction 1920s style, Classic pulp adventure homage, Maritime historical fiction, Golden Age adventure series.
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