Nowhere are currents so deadly or storms so fierce as they are along the coast of Twill.
Eric's own parents were swept from their fishing boat and drowned when he was small. Now he lives and fishes with his aunt Opal, keeping a nervous eye on his beloved pet sea gull, whom he rescued as a fledgling from the furious waves. The free-spirited bird is always flying into trouble.
But what of the secretive, rosy-hued lampfish that swim in Twill's ocean? They seem to pass unscathed through the rip-tides and currents. Nor do they fear the black boil of water that is the whirlpool off Cantrip's Point.
"There's systems at work you know nothing about," an ancient fishcatcher confides to Eric one night beside the sea. Soon, boy and gull are lured on a journey with the old man, an adventure that leads down the whirlpool into a long-forgotten underworld that provides some answers, but by no means all.
Janet Taylor Lisle's Afternoon of the Elves is a 1990 Newbery Honor Book. Her other novels are The Great Dimpole Oak, The Dancing Cats of Applesap, and Sirens and Spies.
She lives with her family in Montclair, New Jersey, and spends summers on the seacoast of Rhode Island, the inspiration for the setting of The Lampfish of Twill.
Wendy Anderson Halperin is a painter who lives with her family in South Haven, Michigan. This is her first book.
Jacket illustration copyright© 1991 by Wendy Anderson Halperin
—from the dust jacket
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