Alice, already unhappy at the sale of her childhood home, is also being sent away to a small Scottish boarding school. She meets fellow year seven Stormy Loch student Jesse Okuyo on the train. They hit it off, and then he betrays her, while another student, Fergus Mackenzie, trips her on arrival. From these inauspicious beginnings, a beautiful friendship forms among the three. It starts with Fergus’s apology, and comes to fullness during the year-end orienteering competition. Alice, who is white, plans to use the contest as cover to rendezvous with her father, Barney, whom she adores. Jesse, Black, overshadowed in his own mind by accomplished older brothers, longs to win the competition. Fergus, white, a bored genius angry at his parents for ignoring him, is committed to helping Alice achieve her goal. But the small package Barney sent Alice and told her to bring to their meeting turns out to contain big trouble in this over- the-top story perfectly pitched in the voice of an omniscient narrator drolly describing the quirkiness of Stormy Loch, where every student has a talent to be nurtured, the unreliability of Barney as a parent, and the ominousness of the villains (yes, there are villains). There is nothing but warmth and tenderness for its three main characters; above all Alice, who finds her courage, faces hard truths, and shines. (Ages 9–12)