Race to the Bottom of the Sea

 

Fidelia lives the perfect life with her marine biologist parents.  The Doctors Quail and their precocious daughter spend their time exploring oceans to study and discover plant and animal life.  Fidelia's inventions have helped progress the work, especially a submersible called The Egg, but one day her parents are caught underwater in The Egg during a terrible storm, a storm they don't survive.

Fidelia is wracked with grief and guilt as she moves into the library with her Aunt Julia.  Fidelia has lost her parents and her love of the sea, as well.

But in the midst of her grief, she is kidnapped by pirates!  Merrick the Merciless is dying, and he needs a Quail's expertise to retrieve his greatest treasure.  Merrick promises he will kill Fidelia if she can't find a way to get to the ocean floor and search for the treasure without her parents' diving suit. 

She spends the long voyage working on an invention that seems like an impossibility, a way to breathe underwater.  As she works, she begins to see glimmers of humanity in the pirates, but they are racing against the clock, pursued by a cruel Admiral who is bent on Merrick's death and the red daisies, a disease that is quickly eating away at the pirate from the inside.

There are also glimpses into the past at Merrick's glory days and at his long lost love.  Will Fidelia make her water eater work, and find a way back to Aunt Julia, or will she become another victim of the sea?

I love this book so much!  Seriously, I don't know what I was expecting, but I was completely surprised and blown away by Lindsay Eager's multi-layered story of piracy, treasure, marine biology, engineering, and doomed love.  Just read it!  Highly recommended!