Pine Island Home

Polly Horvath

Contents (16)

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Also by Polly Horvath

The Letter

Aunt Martha’s Neighbor

Miss Webster

Al Farber

Mr. Pennypacker

Billy Bear

Donald Pettinger

Lost

Davy Clement

The Party

The Dance

The Boat

Another Happy Middle

Acknowledgments

Margaret Ferguson Books

HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Printed and bound in July 2020 at Maple Press, York, PA, USA.

www.holidayhouse.com

First Edition

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Horvath, Polly, author.

Title: Pine Island home / Polly Horvath.

Description: First edition. | New York : Holiday House, [2020] “Margaret Ferguson Books.” | Audience: Ages 9–12.
Audience: Grades 4–6. | Summary: Orphaned and alone, the four McCready sisters, aged eight to fourteen, move to a house off the
coast of British Columbia left them by their great aunt, and get by with the help of neighbors. | Identifiers: LCCN 2019052283
ISBN 9780823447855 (hardcover) | Subjects: CYAC: Sisters—Fiction. Orphans—Fiction. | Eccentrics and eccentricities—Fiction.
British Columbia—Fiction. | Classification: LCC PZ7.H79224 Pin 2020 DDC [Fic]—dc23 | LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019052283

To Arnie, Emily, Rebecca, Millie, Laddie, Bo, and Murphy. And to Keena, Zayda, Andrew, and Bonnie too.

ALSO BY POLLY HORVATH

An Occasional Cow

(Pictures by Gioia Fiammenghi)

No More Cornflakes

The Happy Yellow Car

When the Circus Came to Town

The Trolls

Everything on a Waffle

The Canning Season

The Vacation

The Pepins and Their Problems

(Pictures by Marylin Hafner)

The Corps of the Bare-Boned Plane

My One Hundred Adventures

Northward to the Moon

Mr. and Mrs. Bunny—Detectives Extraordinaire!

(Pictures by Sophie Blackall)

One Year in Coal Harbor

Lord and Lady Bunny—Almost Royalty!

(Pictures by Sophie Blackall)

The Night Garden

Very Rich

The Letter

THE McCready sisters, Fiona, fourteen, Marlin, twelve, Natasha, ten, and Charlie, eight, were raised in a missionary family. They had been happily and safely moving from pillar to post all over the world when their parents, taking their first vacation ever, having come into a small sum of money from an aging uncle who “felt it strongly” that they had never had a honeymoon, invited them to Thailand, where he ran a small hotel. The three of them and the hotel were swept away in a tsunami. The four girls were, at the time, living in Borneo, in a small cottage far back in the jungle without benefit of internet or phone service, being seen after by a visiting church volunteer who couldn’t continue to take care of them as she had other plans. So the church had a Mrs. Weatherspoon from Australia come to stay with them until someone in their family could step forward. That took a year.