The Lake Lure Chronicles

The Adventures of Willy and Billy is an exciting yet educational tale about the adventures and misadventures of a pair of young fish who inhabit the “Magic Lake”. We learn that the young fish in the lake attend school in the old church that lies submerged on the lake bottom. A large catfish by the name of Chester is responsible for ringing the church bell each morning to call the young fish to school where Mrs. Carp teaches her young students all the important things fish need to know.

During summer vacation, Willy coaxes his best friend Billy to swim too close to the water intake for the power turbines at the dam, with predictably disastrous results. Willy survives his hazardous trip through the turbines but ends up in the river a hundred feet below the dam with little hope of ever seeing his family and friends again. But through resourcefulness, and a miraculous series of events, Billy manages to return to the Magic Lake and is reunited with his family and his friend Willy to live happily ever-after, or at least until their next misadventure.

• Hardcover, First Edition

• Thirty-two pages with seventeen beautiful watercolor illustrations

• Suitable as a read-to story for young children

• Can also be read and enjoyed by youngsters in grades 4 and up.

A wizard is carved from the stump of a giant dead oak tree by a chain saw artist from Bat Cave. Most people think the Wizard is just a wood carving, but Rachel knows better. Rachel is a young athletic girl who loves to swim and whose family spends each summer at magical Lake Lure. Rachel is summoned by the Wizard to serve as his hands and feet to do his work of helping wild creatures in trouble, however she must not tell anyone that the Wizard is real and knows all things. At the Wizard’s bidding, she convinces her dad to persuade the town fathers to stop lowering the lake in the wintertime, thus preserving the fish habitat along the shoreline and increasing the fish population. She is then sent by the Wizard, along with her unsuspecting sister Kim, to save a young deer named Myra from drowning while trying to swim across the lake in search of her mother, Anna Lee.

The Wizard is eventually set free by a bolt of lightning to move about and do his own good work. Rachel never sees the Wizard again, but is keenly aware of his presence when, a few years later, she becomes the youngest girl ever to win a gold medal in the Olympic 400 meter freestyle swimming competition.