Thunder from the Sea
Joan Hiatt Harlow
ALADDIN PAPERBACKS 2004, 238 pp., $4.99
ISBN 1-4169-1214-2
Thunder from the Sea is a book that combines the love of a dog story with the excitement of an adventure book. The story takes place in 1929 Newfoundland and is about a boy named Tom Campbell who has been living at the Mission Orphanage since he was three. Now thirteen, Tom is adopted by Enoch and Fiona Murray who live on Back’O the Moon island, with the nearest town being a place on the mainland called Chance-Along. Thinking that Enoch, who is a fisherman, will have high working expectations for him, Tom decides to get to work right away. On one particular fishing trip (pretty obvious for a fisherman), a mighty storm approaches. While looking out at the sea Tom barely makes out a figure in the water. it’s a dog! Frantically swimming through the waves as if it had fallen out of another boat, the only problem is there is no other boat around that could be a source to where the dog came from. Tom rescues the dog (which happens to be a Newfoundland) and names it Thunder because of a distinctive thunderbolt shape on its chest.
Tom believes that he finally has got the near-perfect kind of life, especially with the numerous adventures that he and Thunder have until two problems turn it all around, first of all, Fiona becomes pregnant and Tom wonders if the Murray’s will want him anymore, second, chances are becoming good that Thunders owner may be found. Tom must now work with the odds on whether he’ll be sent back to the orphanage or not or if he’ll have to give up is close friend Thunder.
When writing Thunder from the Sea, Joan Hiatt Harlow does an excellent job of combining dog stories such as Old Yeller, orphan tales including Oliver Twist and natural disaster danger stories such as The Perfect Storm into one book. Even better, Harlow took ideas from true events in the past including a time when a dog named Prince (not Thunder) was lost overboard from a boat in 1897 then miraculously survived and was rescued. I would recommend Thunder from the Sea to kids ages 9-13 because of the tricky Canadian vocabulary and the book thickness. But the story is easy to follow. This book is great for anyone looking for a story that has some chapters that end cliffhanger like and others that don’t. This book is also for people who enjoy reading books that have heroic dogs and also tell a lot about the other characters to. It was interesting for me to read a book about an orphan and a Newfoundland dog in Newfoundland, a Canadian province seldom talked about in books.
~ reviewed by Sam
