Praise
“Breaking the Ring is a suspenseful tale of resourceful adolescents in a scrape. The adults are portrayed as supportive, caring, intelligent, and trusting. Maggie’s divorcing parents subplot provides a realistic tie to the main action. Nicely rendered first effort by Inglehart.”
Recommended. VOYA
“A suspenseful waiting game …The impact of the frightening adventure lies in its realism. A good adventure story for girls.”
Bulletin for the Center of the Study of Children’s Books
About
Breaking the Ring grew out of a teaching sabbatical spent in Scotland. I’d won a fellowship at the University of St. Andrews, and along with my husband and two young children, moved to a small flat on College Street. I was working on a novel about Elizabeth of York, the mother of Henry VIII, sister of the murdered princes found in the Tower. Although I’d been teaching literature for many years, I quickly realized that writing a novel was an entirely different matter! So I set aside the weighty research and scrap of manuscript and embarked on a new project. I decided to write a “young adult” novel for my daughters, for when they’d be old enough to read. I wanted to create an adventurous mystery like the ones I’d loved when I was a girl. I chose the perfect locale, the Thousand Islands; the St. Lawrence River borders two countries and has a long history of espionage and smuggling. (I later used this location for Grindstone, set during the Civil War.) I was very lucky: McIntosh & Otis picked up my manuscript and sold it to Little, Brown a few weeks later.
Breaking the Ring is no longer in print, but will be available as a Kindle ebook in 2016.