Wish Me Luck (Laurel-Leaf Books)

The Story

Thirteen-year-old Tom, an unhappy foster child in Liverpool, falls into a massive open grave and is transported to Ireland in 1847 in the middle of the deadly potato famine. Thirteen-year-old Tom Mullen has always been alone, moving about from one disastrous foster home situation to another. He has never known the true meaning of family love. When he hears that a mass grave has been unearthed on his school grounds, he feels drawn to the grave, pulled toward it, but can’t explain why. I sucked in a deep breath to try and calm my bursting chest. The smell from the open grave wasn’t bad the way you’d expect from so many dead people. . . . But it wasn’t the smell that got to me, it was the feeling that something in the black pit was calling and reaching out to me, pulling me, that same urge again, the one I’d been getting for the past couple of days, but stronger now and more powerful. It terrified me, if you really want to know the truth. The truth is Tom’s life is about to change forever.