The Map I Forged to Cocos Island

About this book

San Francisco, 1911. Sixteen-year-old Toby Marsh can copy any hand he sees, and he lies better than he copies. When a fight on his boarding-house stairs leaves a rent collector bleeding and still, Toby needs to be out of the city before anyone comes looking. So he forges a treasure map: a sea-stained chart of Cocos Island, the rain-drowned rock in the Pacific where a captain is said to have buried the gold of Lima. He sells it to a widow betting her boatyard on it, with himself attached as the only one who can read it. Now he is sailing south with her sharp-eyed daughter, who doesn't believe a word, and a moneylender's man with a revolver, who believes too much. Toby swears every word of his account is true. The island is about to test that.