THE TREASURE OF SAVAGE ISLAND

Hart gives 18th-century life on a sparsely settled Virginia island a decidedly unappealing cast in this melodramatic historical yarn. Forced into servitude by the harsh new owner of a tavern her widowed father has lost in a card game, Molly leads a miserable existence. However, hers is not as brutal as the one Rafe, a half-white plantation slave caught reading and savagely whipped for it, is trying to escape. When Rafe washes ashore in the wake of a shipwreck, he and Molly, his rescuer, become wary allies. This comes in handy when picaroons (Tory pirates active after the Revolutionary War) attack the village in search of a rumored stash of British gold. The author needs a number of big contrivances to bring her tale round to a happy ending. She does a creditable job, however, of showing how a slave would use a mix of playacting and quick wit to get by in a hostile world and of taking two young people past realistically portrayed prejudices to a halting, mistrustful but nonetheless real friendship. Too earnest, but absorbing nonetheless. (Fiction. 12-15)