Coming soon in 2021 from Author Donan Berg.
The countdown to a fantasy adventure has begun.
Find the Girl
Seventh grader Eta Dorcas captures a weasel in an Iowa cave.
The weasel speaks.
And, more.
Eta’s fingertips glow blue and she dares not tell
Dad, Grandma, sister Daria, nor brother Nathan.
Ian, a seventeen-year-old sailor
in the 1800s, is cursed to live as a 21st Century weasel unless he collects the
silver, gold, and pearl spelled out by an anagram: ‘Find the Girl.’
Eta doesn’t believe she has
magical powers. Yet, she’s an empowering spirit as she and Ian propel
themselves on three separate trips to 1859 Greece, Ireland and the Mississippi
River. The adventures blend harrowing intrigue, bond-building, and
enlightenment without romance as Ian’s collectibles are not freely given. Eta’s
family dynamics build and reveal her empathy.
Read a sample:
Chapter One
Eta Dorcas feared that, if
she looked at her fingers, it would still be there. Seated in a minivan’s
second row, she twiddled her thumbs. After a peek, she prayed for a miracle.
“Are
you buckled in?”
“Yes,
Grandma.”
As
Grandma drove toward home, Eta steadied her gaze on the crown of Daria’s head
as her younger sister sat pinned to the family minivan front seat by the
stretched seat harness.
“Mares’
tails and mackerel scales make lofty ships to carry low sails.”
“What’s
that, Grandma?” Daria asked.
“Old
saying your Grandpa often repeated ever since we meet to warn of foul weather
coming.”
Eta had
studied clouds in last year’s seventh grade. Her gaze beyond the minivan’s side
window failed to discern or gather enough wispy threads to even imagine in the
Eastern Iowa clouds the outline of a horse, any fish, or a 19th Century sailing
ship. Swallowing hard, she stared at her right hand’s closed fist and the
exposed knuckles that rested on her seated thigh.
She
closed her eyes and counted inside her head.
When
she reached ten, she opened her eyes and her right fist to expose her right
hand fingertips to her full view.
She
gasped. The skin beneath her four right-hand fingernails glowed blue. As if by
magic, the blue tint had traveled from the right forefinger to her pinkie.
Her
feeling no pain reminded her that five months ago her seventh-grade teacher,
Miss Slayton, convinced all, except dorky Stephen Jessup, that in the vacuum of
outer space a human’s scream wouldn’t be heard.
If Eta
could peer through narrowed eyes into the future, would she one day be floating
beyond the earth’s atmosphere in an astral plane, her skin aglow like
stratosphere plasma? If she time-traveled into the 19th Century, would a pirate
force her to walk the plank from a captured merchant clipper ship, condemned to
Davy Jones’ Locker by a swirling sea?
Or,
within the next thirty minutes, before they arrived home, would a tornado
uplift the minivan, ala Dorothy, and propel her through the western horizon’s
dense black clouds?
“Eta,
you all right?” Grandma asked.
“Fine,”
Eta lied. To convince Grandma she was, Eta asked, “Was Grandpa a sailor?”
“Aye.”
Grandma chuckled. “True and true.”
Eta wiggled her left-hand forefinger. Unable to stop the
blue pigment from discoloring the pale flesh beneath her unpainted fingernail,
a deepening dread engulfed Eta that she’d either be an Avatar, a Smurf, or dead
within the week.
Daria asked, “Did I ever know Grandpa?”
“No, dear. Before either of you were born, no diver found
him after his boat swamped near Ross Island, Ireland.”
Eta, locked into her own evolving catastrophe, haphazardly
listened to, but did not join, the front-seat conversation.
“Did you live in Ireland, Grandma?”
“No. We lived outside Athens, near the port. Grandpa
sailed the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic to the British Isles.”
“Was he a pirate?”
Grandma chuckled a second time. “No, no. Just a sailor who
I’ll always remember for sending me a lovely pearl necklace.”
“Will you show it to me?”
Eta watched Grandma shake her head.
“Sorry to say,” Grandma whispered, “Lost it. Wanted to
pass it on to your mother, but, then one day, discovered I’d misplaced the
necklace and then . . . and then your mother passed.”
“I remember Mom wore pearls.”
“Daria, honey, let’s save this for another day.”
Eta agreed as she continued to stare at her cupped
fingers. Why did the creepy blue glow skip her thumbs? Would the blue disappear
if she scrubbed her fingertips with a toothbrush loaded up with hand sanitizer
after she arrived home?
Since today was Daria’s birthday, Grandma granted her
ten-year-old granddaughter two wishes. The first was a Saturday trip to the
Mississippi River caves near Dubuque, Iowa, and the second, a round-trip
privilege to sit in the front passenger seat.
For once, Eta didn’t whine on the trip home about having
to buckle into the middle seat for it made it easier to hide her fingertip’s
blue glow since older brother Nathan had begged to stay home while Dad left the
farm for work.
Eta bent head and shoulders forward to escape Grandma’s
rearview mirror detection as she let both lips seal her left forefinger within
her mouth. Since a hard suck didn’t result in dizziness, she sucked again
without breaking the seal of her lips.
“Eta, you ill?”
Grandma’s inquiry ignited a shudder within and through
Eta’s nervous system. Eta’s lips released her finger. “There’s a bug on the
floor.”
“Stomp it.”
Eta’s right sneaker kicked the seatback in front of her.
“Got it.” Her second lie, she believed, no less punishable than her first.
Thank you for your read. The full story of Eta's fantastic voyage coming soon.
Click this link to learn about the Find the Girl preorder
