【惡魔島監獄奇遇: 平凡少年X獄卒女兒X世紀罪人】
因為爸爸工作的關係以及妹妹娜塔莉特殊學校的入學需求,莫斯跟著家人搬去惡名昭彰的阿爾卡特拉斯島,也就是俗稱的惡魔島。
來惡魔島之前,莫斯不曉得原來監獄還能挑犯人關,而那些被挑剩的,通常是窮凶極惡的、不可受教的、逃獄未成的、累犯毫無悔改之徒,他們通通都會被送到惡魔島。所以在這裡,竊賊、搶劫犯、騙徒、盜用公款者、強姦犯、縱火怪客、綁架犯、雇傭刺客、殺人魔等等屢見不鮮,也許有那麼一兩個無辜、清白的冤獄,但瞥過罪犯面孔的莫斯認為機率不太高。
他還結交了新朋友-獄卒的女兒派普,一個比其他罪犯還像罪犯的怪異女孩!莫斯的新生活除了將嘗試融入新校園,還得好好看著有自閉症的娜塔莉,並時時更新由派普傳來的監獄消息。
Today I moved to Alcatraz, a twelve-acre rock covered with cement, topped with bird turd and surrounded by water. I'm not the only kid who lives here. There are twenty-three other kids who live on the island because their dads work as guards or cooks or doctors or electricians for the prison, like my dad does. And then there are a ton of murderers, rapists, hit men, con men, stickup men, embezzlers, connivers, burglars, kidnappers and maybe even an innocent man or two, though I doubt it. The convicts we have are the kind other prisons don't want. I never knew prisons could be picky, but I guess they can. You get to Alcatraz by being the worst of the worst. Unless you're me. I came here because my mother said I had to.
Moose Flannagan moves with his family to Alcatraz so his dad can work as a prison guard and his sister, Natalie, can attend a special school. But Natalie has autism, and when she's denied admittance to the school, the stark setting of Alcatraz begins to unravel the tenuous coping mechanisms Moose's family has used for dealing with her disorder.
When Moose meets Piper, the cute daughter of the Warden, he knows right off she's trouble. But she's also strangely irresistible. All Moose wants to do is protect Natalie, live up to his parents' expectations, and stay out of trouble. But on Alcatraz, trouble is never very far away.
Set in 1935, when guards actually lived on Alcatraz Island with their families. Choldenko's second novel brings humor to the complexities of family dynamics and illuminates the real struggle of a kid trying to free himself from the "good boy" stance he's taken his whole life.