cover image Hook’s Tale

Hook’s Tale

John Leonard Pielmeier. Scribner, $25 (288p) ISBN 978-1-5011-6105-6

In Pielmeier’s rollicking version of a familiar story, Peter Pan is a far cry from J.M. Barrie’s charming hero. The hero in this iteration is Hook, otherwise known as James Cook, descendant of the famous captain of the same name. Pielmeier claims to have found Hook’s memoirs, in which he recounts losing his beloved mother, getting kicked out of Eton, and being press-ganged at age 14 onto a ship heading to the Caribbean. In possession of a treasure map that has something to do with his absent father, also a ship’s captain, Cook and his crew mutiny and go in search of fortune, ending up in the vicinity of the time-bent realm of Never-Isle. Here Cook encounters Peter, a lonely, self-absorbed boy who has ceased to age. Cook, too, stops growing older for a time. In his adventures on Never-Isle, he saves the life of the princess Tiger Lily, who then chooses him to be her husband, much to the chagrin of Tinkerbell, who also loves him. In this version, Cook doesn’t fear the crocodile who ticks; rather he has raised and cared for the creature who swallowed his father’s pocket watch, naming it after his mother, Daisy. When Peter betrays Cook and Tiger Lily, Cook sets out to discover his own identity back in the land of the living. What he finds, including who the Darlings (from the canonical story) really are, and how he ends up with a hook for a hand, satisfyingly upend all the familiar elements of Barrie’s children’s story. A splendid yarn.[em] (July) [/em]