Winner of Silver Key for Novel Writing at the 2022 Scholastic Art and Writing Contest
Years ago, the red people came to the island of Tuvalu.
They ransacked the nation, killed the king, and then they all died mysteriously. The citizens of Tuvalu were forced to hide underground, where they’ve remained unseen up till today. Nobody remembers exactly how it happened.
Correction: Kiribati Beru remembers, but nobody takes the senile 80-year old seriously, not until the 14-year old schoolboy Nauru robs his library, that is. Escaping with a small red communist propaganda book in hand, Nauru is transported into an alternate world where his idols from his history books have become ruthless, cunning villains. And the most gut-wrenching part is that it all fits.
Thrown into a quest to escape his homeland and return with the specter of Communism behind him, Nauru enters an unlikely friendship with Kiribati and finds his getaway to the sky-land in the form of a classified military submarine.
Yet things aren’t as they seem in the Soviet Union. In fact, it’s no more.
Journey after journey, Nauru learns about the world and himself – why to love those ancestors he hated, the reasons for the fall of communism, and details about the lives of the sky-people. When things go horribly wrong for him and his nation, he’s forced to rethink his relationship with the outside world.
Nauru makes a final journey to ally with the sky-people and save his people, and Tuvalu’s day of reckoning arrives far sooner than anticipated. Despite forever being taught to never trust an outsider, Tuvalu breaks free.
