After his father’s awful stroke, Ephraim Appledore-Smith and his family have moved to their old family home in Crystal Springs, Maine, where a hundred years ago the Appledores bottled water believed to have healing properties. Mallory, a new classmate of his, is struggling to cope with her parents’ separation and has found refuge in science and skepticism of her mother’s mystical tales of the Fountain of Youth. Will, another classmate, befriends the two of them, to his father’s dismay – there are generations of bad blood between their families. As Ephraim becomes obsessed with finding the Fountain of Youth and using it to heal his father, the three of them explore the dilapidated mansion, interspersed with flashbacks to Mallory’s ancestor Nora, who helped old Dr. Appledore with his scientific discoveries.
Blakemore skillfully negotiates middle-school fears of fitting in, and balances characters learning that their parents are right about some things with characters forging their own identity against their parents’ wishes – both important, and seemingly contradictory, lessons for teenagers to learn. Of course, there are also heavy topics such as a parent’s illness (Ephraim’s father is catatonic from his stroke, and the doctors aren’t sure if he’ll ever recover) or parents separating (Mallory’s mother has moved out), painted against a backdrop of school projects and science experiments. The flashbacks are a nice touch, taking place as Admiral Robert Peary’s expedition nears the North Pole, while Ephraim, Mallory, and Will learn about Arctic exploration in the present. Blakemore never holds the reader’s hand, and several plot threads are left deliberately not wrapped up (though not too difficult to solve for the attentive reader). Though Ephraim can be a frustrating protagonist at times, very cocky and self-centered at first, The Water Castle is an excellent book for science-, history-, or fantasy-loving middle-grade readers.
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