Meloy keeps the pace quick and tensions high, but she never loses sight of her target audience. Not only is there a Russian spy and a member of the German secret police, there is an English double agent, a Chinese chemist and, of course, our plucky and adventurous American girl protagonist. The international cast in “The Apothecary” and the role each one plays in the plot serve as a subtle introduction to the World War II conflict and its aftermath for readers who may not have learned much about it yet in school. The recipes for such universally desired effects not only exist in the Pharmacopoeia, but they’re also regularly put to use in “The Apothecary,” as Janie and Benjamin evade a member of the East German Stasi called the Scar and befriend a Dickensian lock picker named Pip. It’s hard to imagine a middle schooler who hasn’t, at some point, wished for invisibility or to fly like a bird or to force adversaries to speak the truth. Traipsing around London with Janie, Benjamin learns that spies are inextricably linked with the family business, and the two are soon caught up in a life-or-death mission that involves the keeping of a 700-year-old book of secret spells and tinctures called the Pharmacopoeia. He’s far more interested in espionage, which he practices in the park while playing chess with Janie, keeping tabs on a peg-legged Russian he suspects is passing secrets to real spies. Benjamin, however, wants nothing to do with his dad’s profession. But it isn’t long before Janie befriends Benjamin and is drawn into the strange and mysterious world of alchemy.īenjamin’s father is an apothecary, carrying on a family tradition that dates to the Middle Ages. and flee to London - a move Janie describes as “leaving a Technicolor movie and walking into a black-and-white one.” The transition from sock-hopping Hollywood High to the uniformed strictures of St.
Janie Scott is the only daughter of screenwriter parents who, suspected of communist activity in 1952, were blacklisted in L.A. A gem of historical fiction for the middle-school set, Meloy’s children’s debut is a pitch-perfect melding of postwar intrigue and ancient medicinal arts told from the perspective of a 14-year-old girl. There are far fewer stories about its Cold War aftermath, and even fewer that attempt to channel the early ‘50s from a teenager’s point of view - but Maile Meloy’s “The Apothecary” does just that. Putnam’s Sons: 353 pp., $16.99, ages 10 and olderĪ quick Amazon search for books on World War II yields an astonishing 45,961 titles.
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