The Blue Sharks

A new middle grade mystery from Coretta Scott King and Newbery Honor winner Alicia D. Williams set during the summer of 1983 when five Black girls join a swim team only to find themselves investigating two mysterious drownings.

It’s the summer of 1983 in West Edenton and five girls—Jubi, Lena, Mercy, Domonique and Zuri—each receive strange invitations to attend swim team tryouts at the Charles E. Hammer Municipal Pool. None of the girls know who sent the invitations or why, but they’re intrigued enough to find out.

On the day of tryouts, the air is heavy with the heat of June. Their coach, Patricia Moses aka Coach Pat, is excited about leading West Edenton’s first all-girl swim team. But before tryouts can begin, folks around town, including Sister Marshall and her grandson, warn the girls to leave this place at once. Sister Marshall believes the pool is haunted—cursed with a deep foreboding darkness. And Coach Pat and the girls fear she may be right.

It’s been a year since the death of a Black boy who drowned in the pool on a day filled with the laughter of children and families enjoying the water. It’s been 24 years since the first drowning occurred when another Black boy died in the very waters Jubi, Lena, Mercy, Domonique, and Zuri are set to swim in. The water itself is said to be cursed, and while some of the girls don’t believe in Hoodoo, Mercy and Domonique know enough about haints and ghosts to know the curse is something to beware.

As the mystery about the boys’ deaths deepens and certain buried truths begin to come to light, the girls must work together as a team—in and out of the pool—to make themselves and Coach Pat proud.