Carolina Castle was written by Mildred A. Wirt and was published by the Penn Publishing Company in 1936. It is a stand-alone novel and is quite scarce.In Carolina Castle, Joan Carling spends the summer with her school friend, Evelyn Brandleton, near Charleston, South Carolina. The girls' ages are not given, but since Evelyn's brother Benny drives, I assume that the young people are not very young. Perhaps the young people are supposed to be around 17 or 18, but somehow, they seem a little younger to me, so I place their ages at around 14 to 15.
As the story opens, Evelyn frets because her brother, Benny, has gone off in his car, forgetting that he was to take the girls to Charleston that day. The situation is made worse because of the rain, since the girls cannot go outside.
After the rain clears, Evelyn decides to take Joan to Castle Hill where the girls explore the ruins of an old plantation that was burned down during the Revolutionary War. The girls discover an old passageway hidden in the ruins. They have no candles, so they are unable to explore the ruins that day. They cover the opening and decide to tell Benny nothing about their discovery.
Of course Benny immediately suspects that the girls are hiding something from him. Unknown to them, Benny explores the ruins. Soon, the three young people exchange stories and explore the passageway together. They discover an old buried chest that contains a diary.
The diary was written by a young woman during the Revolutionary War. It tells the story of her family's harrowing experiences during that time. The young people decide to try to discover the fate of the young woman who wrote the diary.
This book is an excellent read. Unfortunately, Carolina Castle is very hard to find. It has been reprinted in recent years, but those copies seldom come up for sale and tend to be expensive.
5 comments:
I love these reviews of different MWB books!
Hi, Jennifer,
I have an off-topic question. Have you (or anyone else?) ever seen a Nancy Drew Moonstone Castle book with blue multi-scene endapapers? According to NancyDrewSleuth website blue multi-scenes were used only on vols. 1-38, but someone I know has found one with blue multi-scene endpapers and we are wondering how uncommon this is? Thanks for any info in this regard! It's one thing Farah doesn't specify for the Format 17 & 18 books.
As far as I know, I have never heard of one. That means that the book would be either one-of-a-kind or one of a very small number of examples. With some of the books that have come to light in the last year or so, it is not that surprising even though we have never seen one before. A number of these bizarre variants do exist.
Would it be possible to get a picture taken of the book so that we can see the cover and the endpapers? I am thinking of along the lines of how I took the second photo in this post.
That's interesting! I've never seen the blue in any of the books past 38 so I'd love to see a picture too of it :)
Jenn:)
So sorry! False alarm... the person didn't actually *have* the book yet, but it was listed as having "blue endpapers" by the seller. When the facts were double-checked with the seller, she admitted it was a mistake - the book is a 1st printing ... with the type I white multi-scene endpapers.
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