When top US scientist Carl Becker moves his family to Britain in May 1940 to work on the new RADAR system all their lives change forever.
Whilst Carl is visiting the Ministry of War police call at his mother’s house and arrest her, his wife Elizabeth, his ten year old daughter, Sarah, and twelve year old son, Jacob, under regulation 18B and send them to camps on the Isle of Man. All because Carl’s mum was born in Germany.
As Carl struggles to find out information Jacob is split from his family because he looks older than his years and he’s sent to a brutal men’s internment camp on the island, and this is where Jacob’s personal war starts.
In this fast paced, exciting adventure three stories run parallel, Carl’s important war work with other scientists at Bawdsey Manor, the idyllic vacation for the Becker females in the holiday camp atmosphere of the Rushen Camp and Jacob’s challenges with his new best friend, Terry Lowe.
Jacob is imprisoned amongst violent nazi supporters, witnesses a terrible drowning, is shipped out to camps in Canada on the doomed Arandora Star, torpedoed, shipwrecked and rescued by the US Navy. But while the British might seem impervious to his plight in the US his story goes all the way to the top, to President FDR himself!
This novel for older children and teenagers highlights the panic that the British nation felt in spring 1940, with Hitler’s armies only a few miles away in Calais poised for invasion, with the RAF stretched to the limit every night, cities bombed and burned to the ground, the plight of children evacuated from Germany in the Kinderstransport and desperate refugees fleeing tyranny and the despair, hope, fun and adventure of two teenage boys, one a displaced American and the other a happy go lucky Yorkshire lad.
Based upon true stories and personal accounts, this Arts Council England supported project finally tells the story of one of Britain’s best kept wartime secrets.
