
If you like action, adventure and mystery with some Indian folklore and history thrown in, you’ll love Ghost Dog of Roanoke Island. C.K. got the idea to write the story when she read an article about the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island. Some think the people that came over on the Mayflower to Plymouth were the first colonists, but they weren’t. Roanoke Island was the very first colony.
In 1587, Sir Walter Raleigh dispatched a group of colonists to Roanoke Island to set up a colony in the new world. A few short months later the colonists sent their Governor, John White, back to England for supplies and help. With the start of the Spanish war, White was not able to return right away. And when he did return to Roanoke Island three years later, the colonists were gone. Completely vanished. No one knows what happened to them. Did they die of starvation or disease? Were they killed? There weren’t any bodies. Did they get blown away by a hurricane? If they had, then why weren’t the buildings destroyed? Many questions surround this never-solved mystery. And so C.K. decided to come up with her own explanation.
When I saw C.K. working on the book, I realized I had to help. After all, I'm almost 13 and it is my story. I didn’t want to move to Roanoke Island. But my dad had lost his job and I heard him and mom whispering about the bank taking our house in Ohio. So, when Great-grandma Ellis left us this beach house on Roanoke Island, Dad went to check it out. He got a job right away and it was a done deal, we were moving. Great-grandma’s house is said to be haunted. At least that’s what the kids at school say. They didn’t have a clue what was really haunting the island.
C.K has created some nice friends for me. There’s this really neat Old English Mastiff and Manny, he’s a cool Native American guy. He can whittle and has a bag of powders that send me on a vision quest to help solve the mystery of the Lost Colony of Roanoke. Mrs. Grundel is a nice grandmotherly-kind of lady. She treats me like a guy wants to be treated, not like a baby…like my dad. Dad doesn’t think I can do anything right. Especially since my sister, Kimmy, fell off the cliff next to our house. I didn’t know she’d followed me up there, but he blames me for it.
C.K. also created this wicked creepy monster from some Indian folklore. He’s big and ugly and smelly. If it weren’t for the Mastiff, I would have been monster meat several times.
I hope you’ll look for me and my friends when Ghost Dog of Roanoke Island comes out in September. It’s one great ghostly adventure.
Thanks for stopping by.
Jack Dahlgren
Ghost Dog of Roanoke Island, by C.K. Volnek. Due out September, 2011 by MuseItUp Publishing.