About

Twelve-year-old Daijah Carmichael arrives at Camp Ironwood expecting the strangest summer school her father could possibly have chosen. Desmond Carmichael heard about the New York camp through a colleague and was impressed by what it offered: language instruction, wilderness survival, first aid, strategy, leadership, and management alongside horseback riding, swimming, fishing, rafting, rock climbing, bonfires, and every other piece of summer-camp chaos a kid could want. Curious, adventurous, and already accustomed to learning the security lessons her father slips into everyday life, Daijah decides she might as well learn everything Camp Ironwood is willing to teach her. She quickly realizes the camp is teaching far more than its brochures admit.

The campers aren’t random children. Many come from families connected to government, diplomacy, defense, major corporations, law enforcement, and international business. Counselors pay unusual attention to certain conversations. Some activities seem designed to test observation, loyalty, decision-making, and leadership as much as teamwork. Doors remain locked without explanation. Trails disappear into sections of the property campers aren’t allowed to enter. Security personnel blend badly into the scenery, and Camp Ironwood’s charming but deeply secretive owner, Pyotr Sokolov, seems to know everything that happens on his grounds before anyone tells him.

Daijah becomes convinced Camp Ironwood is preparing children for something. She’s wrong about exactly what, but she’s right that the camp has another purpose. Pyotr has quietly turned Ironwood into an information farm. Children talk about their parents, their homes, overheard meetings, work frustrations, upcoming travel, government projects, and things they don’t understand are valuable. Counselors know how to encourage those conversations without making them feel like interrogations, and useful pieces eventually find their way back to Pyotr. What looks like harmless camp gossip can become intelligence sent across the Atlantic to help Aleksandr Sokolov navigate threats surrounding the family’s Russian empire. Then Daijah meets Aleksandr’s son.

Oleksiy Sokolov is the strange Russian boy other campers avoid, guarded by the terrifying young man who follows him everywhere and burdened with dangers Daijah doesn’t yet understand. Oleksiy expects her curiosity to fade. Instead, she sits beside him. Friendship comes first, built between archery lessons, lake afternoons, trail rides, ridiculous camp games, stolen snacks, and Daijah’s refusal to accept that someone should be lonely simply because everyone else has decided he’s frightening. As the summers pass, that friendship will grow into first love, while Bogdan Petrov reluctantly becomes part protector, part accomplice, and part unwilling victim of Daijah’s determination to adopt serious Russian men into her life.

But Camp Ironwood’s secrets don’t stay contained inside locked offices and forbidden trails. The same families that make the camp valuable also make it dangerous. Oleksiy’s presence brings enemies of the Sokolovs dangerously close to children who have no idea a criminal war exists around them. Information gathered at Ironwood attracts people willing to steal it. Counselors begin behaving strangely. Security tightens. Unknown men appear where they shouldn’t. Incidents dismissed as accidents start forming patterns, and Daijah’s habit of noticing what adults would rather she overlook keeps placing her closer to the truth.

What begins as one girl’s suspicious investigation of the weirdest summer camp in New York becomes a fight to understand who can be trusted before the hidden world beneath Camp Ironwood breaks into the open. Daijah came to learn languages, survival, leadership, and strategy. She’ll learn all of them and she may need every lesson to survive the summer.