The Lost Island

Now in paperback, a thrilling adventure story about two boys who embark on a magical trip to a mysterious island on Irish coast, in search of one boy's father.

Michael Farrell was forced to grow up quickly after his father disappeared hunting for treasure on the fabled lost island of Inishmananan. Struggling to get by, one evening he and his mother receive a mysterious message from a ragged tramp who stops by their farm. The old man has proof that Michael's father is alive!

Although no one seeking the island has ever returned, Michael and his friend Joe board the first boat they can, only to find out it is run by a treacherous gang of sailors. Braving the unknown seas, they embark in a grand search for Michael's missing father, the spectacular fortune, and the island's long-lost secret. Set amid Ireland's picturesque west coast, plots against Michael and the adventures that befall him make this magical and suspenseful narrative a page-turning, rough and tumble adventure story.

Eilís Dillon (1920-1994) wrote more than thirty books for young people, as well as fiction for adults, including the best-selling historical novel Across the Bitter Sea, about the struggle for Irish independence in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With few exceptions, her young people's books are set in the west of Ireland, in small communities struggling to make a living on the islands and along the the Atlantic coast.

Building on a family tradition of agitation for Irish independence (her mother's brother was one of seven men who signed the Proclamation of the Irish Republic and was executed by the British at the end of the 1916 Easter Rising), Eilís Dillon committed herself to preserving and promoting Irish literature and culture. She was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member and strong supporter of Aosdána, the national association of writers, artists, and composers. She even wrote a few of her children's books in Gaelic, the native Irish language. But, as Kiberd explains, "There was nothing narrowly provincial in her writing: she simply assumed that books about children in Irish settings, if properly written, would be of universal appeal. And so they have proved to be."

Richard Kennedy (1910-1989) illustrated several of Eilís Dillon's books for children. In addition to collaborating on the early design of Puffin Books, Kennedy provided illustrations for several of the press's most celebrated writers, including J.M. Barrie and Astrid Lindgren.