The Star-Spangled Secret

By K.M. Kimball

Book Overview

Caroline Dorsey refuses to believe her beloved older brother, Charlie, could have fallen from the deck of his ship and drowned. There's something that rings untrue in the story the ship's captain has told Caroline's grieving mother, and Caroline is determined to find out what really happened. With rumors of an impending British attack on Baltimore growing every day, Caroline is in a race against time to get to the bottom of her brother's disappearance before the war raging around her forces her to abandon the quest. Her search for the truth takes Caroline from her family's Maryland plantation to President Madison's White House to the dangerous world of the Baltimore docks. But is there an even greater peril waiting for Caroline much closer to home?

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0689845502
• ISBN13: 9780689845505
• Release Date: October 2001
• Publisher: Aladdin
• Length: 234 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.7" x 0.7" x 5.3"
• Age Range: 10 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 5 to 7

Customer Reviews

An exciting historical mystery.

Thirteen-year-old Caroline Dorsey was devastated when her father and baby sister Rebecca died in a yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia. Unwilling to spend another summer in Philadelphia, Caroline's mother decided that she would take her two remaining children, Caroline and fourteen-year-old Charlie, and move to her father's Maryland plantation. But Charlie is determined to go to sea, and his mother doesn't have the will to refuse her son's greatest wish. Meanwhile, Caroline returns to boarding school in Philadelphia, where she receives a letter with news that Charlie has fallen off the deck of his ship and drowned. Caroline knows that can't be true. So she returns home, determined to discover the truth. I highly recommend this combination of history, mystery, suspense, and adventure.