For Ages
10 to 99

With their father en route to Africa for Doctors Without Borders, city-kids Nicholas and younger twin sisters Haley and Hetty are off to spend the summer with their Great-Uncle Nick at his house on Forsaken Lake. Despite some initial doubts, Nicholas is right at home in the country: he learns to sail, learns about his father as a boy, and makes fast friends with a local-girl, the tomboy Charlie.

The summer takes a turn toward the mysterious, though, when Nicholas discovers an old movie that his father made as a boy: it tells the story of the local legend, The Seaweed Strangler, but was never finished. Before long Nicholas wants answers both about the legend, and about the movie. Together, he and Charlie work to uncover the truth and discover some long-buried family secrets along the way.

In this lovely middle-grade novel, Michael D. Beil has invoked one of his own favorites, We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea, as well as other great summer books of years-past.

An Excerpt fromSummer at Forsaken Lake

chapter one

Goblin tugged at her mooring, darting back and forth, her bow pitching high in the air and then dropping violently with every frothy, white-­tipped wave. Her rope halyards—­used to hoist the sails—­slapped against the varnished wooden mast, and a corner of sail that had worked loose flapped noisily in the steadily building breeze. The leaves of the sugar maple tree in the front yard, so brilliantly green a few minutes earlier, turned their dull undersides upward, a million mirrors reflecting the angry gray sky above. Farther out on the lake, the whitecaps were already beaten down by a curtain of rain being pulled across the lake and toward the house and porch where Nicholas Mettleson sat.

His uncle—­great-­uncle, actually—­had promised to take him and his twin sisters sailing today, but now that would have to wait. The worst of the squall—­the heavy wind and the thunder and lightning—­would pass by quickly, but the forecast called for the rain to continue most of the day. Nicholas was only a little bit disappointed, though. After all, it…