• Age: 12 to 18
• Grade: 8 to 12
• Reading age: 12 to 18

Erik and his friends spend all their time on the water, exploring the shoreline and islands off British Columbia's Sunshine Coast. While they all have experience with boats and the outdoors, the unpredictable weather and fickle seas often manage to test their courage and abilities. While exploring a burned-out homestead on a remote island, the teens find themselves involved in a decades-old crime and realize that danger still lurks in the coastal rain forest. After befriending Gary, a retired logger who lives alone, Erik and the others learn of the death of Gary's aunt and uncle in a suspicious fire years before. They are then shocked to find they have aroused the interest of a shadowy stranger who seems to have designs on Gary's home and boat, and perhaps, most terrifyingly, his life. Frantically trying to unravel the web of secrets, the teenagers are in a race to save Gary and ultimately themselves.

Born a stone's throw from the English Channel in Bognor Regis, Jo Hammond's first job was as a dairy farmer. After studying Music and Science in a Liverpool teacher's college, she became a secondary and elementary school teacher, also a member of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic choir. She emigrated to the Sunshine Coast of BC, Canada in 1967 on a 6,000 ton freighter, sailing with a cargo of Rolls Royces, Robertsons' Marmalade, and Cutty Sark Whisky, via the Panama
Canal. After a further three years of teaching, she married a log salvor and obtained her own log salvage licence. During the following 28 years she worked with and without her husband on the log salvage boat, reared two children (on and off the log salvage boat,) performed as a classically-trained soprano, helped to start both a choir and a concert series, and volunteered as an ESL teacher.
During the mid nineteen-nineties her husband became an author and her life changed direction. After learning how to fight computers, she taught herself typing so that she could transcribe his manuscripts. Declaring a truce between the computer and herself, she began to take classes with author Betty Keller.
Jo lives in an orchard by the sea just outside Gibsons with three cats and a vast collection of music recordings. Her most recent publication, Edge of the Sound (Catilin Press, 2010), is a work of creative non-fiction for adults. She is willing to do school and library presentations, and also offers one-on-one assistance to young students who need help with creative writing.

Jo Hammond's profile page

"Author Jo Hammond excels at evoking life on the waters off the Sunshine Coast. The adventures of Erik, a student, log salvor and solver of mysteries, will appeal to young male readers who relish adventures on the water... Recommended."

CM Magazine