Selected Book
Black Duck
- Paperback
- Author: Janet Taylor Lisle
- Publisher: Puffin
- Release Date: September 2007
- Reading Level: Young Adult
- ISBN-10: 0142409022
- ISBN-13: 9780142409022
- List Price: $6.99
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Summaries and Customer Reviews provided by Amazon
SummaryIt is spring 1929, and Prohibition is in full swing. So when Ruben and Jeddy find a dead body washed up on the shore of their small coastal Rhode Island town, they are sure it has something to do with smuggling liquor. Soon the boys, along with Jeddy’s strongwilled sister, Marina, are drawn in, suspected by rival bootlegging gangs of taking something crucial off the dead man. Then Ruben meets the daring captain of the Black Duck, the most elusive smuggling craft of them all, and it isn’t long before he’s caught in a war between two of the most dangerous prohibition gangs. |
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Masterful Storytelling
Rating:
Ten years after the enactment of the Prohibition law, there occurred in the Narragansett Bay an incident that contributed to its repeal. The attack by a Coast Guard cutter of a legendary rum-running fishing boat called the Black Duck, which killed most of its crew. No one knows the details of that attack, but Janet Taylor Lisle draws upon the legend to present a gripping and plausible speculation.
The story is told in the present day to a young student journalist by an old man who was himself a boy when the events took place in the Summer of 1929, and who was intimately involved with the event. It is a story of betrayal, broken friendships, dangerous loyalties and ethical dilemmas. As one of the characters, the beautiful and adventurous daughter of the Chief of Police, says, "Sometimes I stop and wonder what's right ... And there isn't any answer, so I just go along. I guess, in the end, if you have to make a choice, you do what's best for the people you love." There is a moral ambiguity to the story that sets it apart from much of the literature of the genre and is, perhaps, one of its greatest strengths.
Yes, the Black Duck's crew was breaking the law, but on the North coasts bordering Canada, from Minnesota to Rhode Island, it was an accepted and often lauded activity. Most everybody in the small border towns profited from it and the police mostly looked the other way.
The old man, Reuben Hart who, as a boy, found a dead body washed up on the shore where he was looking for lobster pots with his best friend Jeddy.
The discovery of the well dressed body signaled a sea-change in the business of smuggling liquor, the arrival of the big gangs from Boston and New York and the end of the trade as a purely local enterprise. The inhabitants of the town were to be squeezed between the two rival mobs and the Coast Guard.
Sailing blithely between these forces was the Black Duck which, having been fitted with two World War One aircraft engines, escaped all dangers until that last fateful night when it met its doom.
The award winning author crafts a thrilling mystery that also deals with some important ethical issues in an historical context that is vividly and accurately presented. The characters are well developed and distinct and the action, told as two stories, one in the present and one in the 1920's, is compelling. The writing is vivid and compact. Taylor is a master of suspense. We know from the start what happened to the Black Duck; the mystery we unravel is how it happened and who was responsible.
Highly recommended.
Adventurous: Rumrunners and Murder!!
Rating:
Dead Bodies washing up on the beach, kidknapping, rummrunning, this book never has a dull moment! David, a freshamn in highschool, wants to be a writer. But, his dad wants him to work for the family landscape business. However, David is determined to get a job with the newspaper, so he goes to Ruben Hart. Ruben knows a thing or two about the "Black Duck," and this book is the spine-chilling interview between Ruben and David.
It all started when Jeddy McKenzie, Ruben's best friend, and Ruben are walking on a beach one day, and come upon a dead man's body. It was washed up, and there is a bullet hole in the man's neck. The boys run home, and call the shady deputy, because Jeddy's dad, the cheif of their small town's police force, is out of town. It takes awhile for Charlie to get to the scene, but when he does, the body is gone. They realize they are dealing with some serious men, because there are no marks on the sand, so somebody flew in, landed on the water, got the body, and flew out.
Ruben and Jeddy think it is rumrunners. They know its going on in their town, and the man had a siut and expensive watch on. However, nobody knows Ruben took the man's pipe and tobacco pouch out of the man's pocket...until later. Then one night, Ruben sneaks down to a harbor, and secretly watches an unload take place. It also happens to be off the famous "Black Duck," the fastest and sneakiest smuggling speedboat in the news. Outruns and outwits every coast guard cuttter everytime. David wants to tell Jeddy, but he just can't, and he knows that Jeddy would tell his dad, because Jeddy wants to be a cop, and he tells his dad everything, even thpugh Ruben doesn't think he should.
Thus, begins the seperation of Ruben and Jeddy. Tah major straw that breaks their friendship's back is when they go to see an old man named Tom Morrison, and ask him what he knows about whats been going on. He tells them of the airplane that came in that day, and that the dead man's name was Tony Mordello, a rich smuggler. He also said that all the men were looking for the ticket. Tony had paid for a whole shipment of liquor worth half a million dollars, and no one was ther to claim it. On the way home Jeddy said he had to tell his dad all that, and Ruben saud that he shouldn't. It put them in a huge fight, and from then on, Ruben and Jeddy are seperated. When Ruben went home that night he looked deeper into the tobacco pouch, and pulled out a rolled up half fifty dollar bill. He stashed it in his math book to flatten out. He though nothing of it until he talked to Billy.
Billy is the skipper of the "Black Duck," and he is into Marina McKenzie, Jeddy's older sister, and so is Ruben. Ruben meets him one time when visiting Tom, and Billy pulls him aside and says that all of the mobs are now after him because they heard he has the ticket. Billy says they are willing to kill for it. Ruben is still confused, and asked what exactly the ticket it. Billy tells him that this shipment is settled with a torn fifty dollar bill. Ruben s shocked, but keeps his cool and denies it. It is then that he and Marina become very close.
Marina keeps teling Ruben to be careful, and to wattch his bask, but he ignores her, and one night he gets kidknapped. He begins to realize how serious things really are. Thankfully, Marina has been watching him, and Billy and her, and a whole group rescue him. Later he realizes that his rescuers are the crew of the "Black Duck." One day at school, Ruben drops the bill out of his math book, and Jeddy gives it back to him. Now Jeddy kows.
In return for his saving, Billy asks Ruben to help on a smuggle job one night. But things go wrong, and the police are involved-on the wrong side of the law. When unexpected machine gun fire opens on the crew, and Ruben on board-what really happens. Did somebody tip off the cutter, is Mr. Mckenzie also involved bootlegging, and will the "Black Duck" escape this time, plus what ever happens to the beautiful Marina...Read "Black Duck" by Janet Taylor Lisle to find out.
This is a good book. It is an easy read, and although it rotated from being in modern day to present day, it is very easy to follow. It is a really good book, and I reccomend it to people who want a little history, but lots of action, and a little bit of love, in a novel. There are really no boring spots, and it all leads up the the dramatic ending. I liked this book a lot, amd the characters are easy to distinguish. The plot is good; it is well worth it.
Derek Fox
good book
Rating:
My 13yr old son was like "what is this" when he found this book I had purchased for him. Hours later he was still absorbed. He said it was a great read and very interesting.
BLACK DUCK
Rating:
Historical fiction either works really well, or it doesn't work at all. Those YA historical fiction novels that deftly capture the distinct essence of a time period and place so different from our own that you can hear the unique cadences in speech patterns and visualize details not even mentioned in the text, those novels are to be treasured and savored more than once because they offer not only a well-told tale, by delicious tastes of bygone eras. Recent novels like AL CAPONE DOES MY SHIRTS and OCTAVIAN NOTHING accomplish these goals heroically; you feel as if you are living in the times and that is part of the emotional journey that we love. YA historical fiction that fails is highly awkward, illogical, anachronistic, and MADDENING. We argue with ourselves about why the author couldn't get it right! The guilty (or at least the current crop) shall remain nameless...
Which leads us to Janet Taylor Lisle's latest. BLACK DUCK is (to maintain the metaphor) an odd bird; it captures that time of the late 1920s nicely, but focuses on perhaps the most unusual of young adult subjects: rumrunning. Told primarily in flashback, BLACK DUCK follows Ruben Hart, a fourteen-year-old from Rhode Island who finds himself (as does most of the rest of the town) involved either directly or peripherally with breaking the law (it is Prohibition, after all). This era is brought to life expertly by Lisle's correct decision to have the story told through a first-person point-of-view. That choice allows her to capture the language, mannerisms and trends of the time quite accurately. Building slowly, she offers plenty of historic detail without the weight of seeming to force the historical information on us (like QUAKE!: DISASTER IN SAN FRANCISCO, 1906 does).
I was also taken with Lisle's characterizations, particularly those of the several characters who made unexpected, yet by-all-means organic choices -- always a joy for an English teacher to read -- that took the plot into unexpected, yet organic places.
Though the historical nature of the book is, as far as I can tell, relatively accurate, it is an incredibly bold move on Lisle's part to make practically all of the characters law-breakers (yes, even many of the kids)! On top of that, the reader and a majority of the characters don't want [SPOILER NOTICE] the legal authority -- in this case, the Coast Guard -- to capture the rumrunners aboard the Black Duck. WOW! And it works... beautifully. To take a questionable subject for young adults and approach it in a highly questionable way, and succeed (!!!) deserves real kudos from YA fans.
As an English teacher, this is a great piece for discussion and analysis -- in part for the above-mentioned reasons, but also for the dramatic structure in which the flashbacks are interrupted by the present and newspaper stories of dates in-between.
So, in the categorization of YA historical fiction that soars and those that sink, this rumrunning ship, heavy with cargo, is definitely buoyant.
Black Duch
Rating:
Black Duck is a great piece of historical fiction. It tells the story of the rumrunners off the coast of Rhode Island. Because of the mystery running through it, this book will keep you reading for more to find a surprise at the end. There is a couple of "bad" words in the book, however, I recommend it for 6th through 12th graders, boys and girls.
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