Former Cornerstone English instructor Nancy Hull (1980-85) writes a page turner from the get go. The opening scene introduces protagonist Alec Curtis, a 14-year-old Brit. And it’s not just any opening scene. Alec clasps an overturned skiff, an agitated sea tugging his arms. The sea takes something from Alec that day—a taking that cements the teen’s resolve.

Weeks later, alarm of possible war changes life around Alec. It’s 1940, and a leader named Hitler is making troubling headlines. Poland falls to Germany. And soon Paris falls too.

At his parent’s boarding house, Alec meets young soldiers and watches as they prepare to fight. He wants to fight too and rues his age. What can he do? How can he ever pay back what was taken? When the young man cleans Lieutenant Courtright’s room, he discovers restricted information, information he soon knows how to use.

Locally, distraction and anxiety escalate. German planes fly low overhead, and the people of Dover understand why. The pilots are snapping pictures of future targets. Strangers arrive in the famous seaport. The man with the white hat. The thin girl with the unfamiliar accent. Both lead Alec to new discoveries.

Finally a chance to serve comes to the teen and he seizes it. However, Alec doesn’t realize the cost he’ll have to pay.

Hull, now a writing professor at Calvin College, bases her debut young adult novel on a historical event. In May, 1940, to save 30,000 trapped British soldiers, Prime Minister Winston Churchill called all fishing vessels to cross the channel. The fisherman were to fish for  soldiers. Many news accounts, Hull says, left out an important part of the story: Britain prayed. Its worried inhabitants prayed during the crossing to Dunkirk, France, and some say those prayers altered the outcome of that day.

Clarion Books published this young adult novel, so Christian themes aren’t obvious. However, prayers and even a miracle or two happen in the pages of this historical novel.