The Tantalizing Tale of Grace Minnaugh
Age range 9 to 12
Grace Minnaugh is an eleven-year-old with a flippy-floppy double life.
Grace Minnaugh is not a fan of big changes. She's miserable during her first weeks in the seaside town of La Toya, sulking like a spoiled brat. Her family embraces the California lifestyle and Grace decides to embrace the seductive beauty of the sea. One fateful morning, while taking a predawn swim, she is caught in a thunderstorm.
Without the ocean skills to survive, she's sucked below the surface, convinced she will drown. Instead, a new life begins. On land, Grace is still the same walking, talking social misfit she's always been. But in the salty sea, she's an underwater marvel. Things get complicated when Grace befriends Alfie DeCosta, a kid who's obsessed with finding an elusive shipwreck off the coast of La Toya. Grace knows exactly where the shipwreck is. But she can't tell Alfie about it, or can she?
The daughter of a Merchant Marine and a Rockaway beach babe, Alice Kaltman’s life has always been ocean-centric. She is the author of Wavehouse and the short fiction collection Staggerwing. She splits her time between Brooklyn and Montauk, New York where she swims, surfs, and writes—weather and waves permitting.