Currents

Bones Brewster is an eleven-year-old slave on a Virginia plantation. Old Mistress doesn’t make life easy when she discovers that Bones has learned to read. When Bones finds her real name in the owner’s slave registry, she tears it out, places it in a bottle, and sets it afloat on the James River.

The bottle drifts across the Atlantic and finds its way to twelve-year-old Lady Bess Kent. Even as her conniving stepmother pilfers the estate piece by piece, Bess is able to save her mother’s pearl-encrusted cross. She gives it to her friend Harry, sealed in the bottle with Bones’s real name. The bottle is carried back to America and into the hands of Mary Margaret Casey.

Twelve-year-old Mary Margaret loves the bottle’s mystery. And Lady Bess’s heirloom might even save Mary Margaret’s sister’s life. All the while Bones’s name is safe in the bottle until Mary Margaret figures out a way to set it free. Bones, Bess, and Mary Margaret are three young girls from very different worlds whose lives are connected by treasures concealed in a bottle and set adrift on the ocean.