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Operation Cassandra: Summary

by Cassandra5 

Posted: 19 August 2007
Word Count: 838


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Operation Cassandra
By Elizabeth Alice Honig
83,000 words
On the morning of her first day of 9th grade, Cass Tepper wakes up to discover that she is now Cassie Follett, a girl living in London in 1938. She has no idea what has happened to her, and struggles to function in her new persona while trying to figure out a way to get home to modern San Francisco. Her large, energetic new family is overwhelming; and at school, she discovers that Cassie’s best friend Isa St. John is a terrible anti-Semite. She gets caught up in Isa’s plans to exclude Ruth Morganstern, a Jewish girl whom Cassie likes, from the netball team.
One day after netball practice, she overhears the glamorous, charismatic star of the senior team use the word 'cool,’¯ and realizes that this girl’“red-headed 'Ginger’¯ Cazalet’“must be a time traveler like herself. Cassie and Ginger, who are both really named Cassandra, think that they have been sent back to 1938 for a purpose’“but what? They know the future, but since they are just children, nobody will believe them.
Cassie becomes friendly, in a somewhat wary way, with Ginger; but she hits it off much better with Ginger’s younger brother Philip, who has a printing press and publishes his school newspaper. The two girls search through birth announcements and run a personal ad seeking more Cassandras. They are answered by Cassandra Mary Annesley-Talbot, who has landed in a loathsome aristocratic family and begs Cassie to rescue her. A fourth Cassandra ('Bibi’¯) loves life with her quiet, doting 1938 family and has no desire to return to modern America. On the other hand Sanda Pell, now at a 'god-forsaken girls’ boarding school with no effective means of heating,’¯ longs for her former life in London.
Cassie asks Ginger to organize a Girl Guide patrol of Cassandras, hoping that if they find a way to intervene in the past together, they will return home. Ginger, though, wants to quit the Guides altogether because of a personal conflict with the Captain, Miss Herrin. Cassie is afraid that Ginger is getting too involved with 1938 life and won’t help get the Cassandras home again, and the two have a huge row.
The new Guide patrol is formed but Ginger is frosty to Cassie. Cassie and Philip quarrel because she will not explain why all his sister’s friends are now named Cassandra. Having effectively lost her two best friends, Cassie turns for help to the supremely self-confident Mary, who is now at school and in Guides with her. They, along with Bibi, resolve to save Jewish children from Germany via the Kindertransport, hoping that this will be enough for them to get home to modern life. Mary writes a play about the coming Holocaust, loosely based on Anne Frank’s diary, for the Guides to stage as a benefit performance. They also search for sponsor families for five specific children from Hamburg who need to be rescued.
To Cassie’s horror, Isa catches the three Cassandras discussing their play, accuses them of being a Jewish conspiracy, and threatens to spill the beans. Aristocratic Mary, appealing to Isa’s snobism and egotism, convinces her instead to be the star of 'Words in the Darkness,’¯ playing a gentile girl who tries to save her Jewish best friend from the Nazis. Mary forces Ginger to agree to tell the other Guides, and Philip, about the Cassandras’ compounding and the future; Cassie, also against Ginger’s wishes, gets Miss Herrin to help them direct the production. The play receives a standing ovation and brings in over a hundred pounds. Lord Rothschild, a colleague of Sanda Pell’s MP father, pledges several hundred more. With what they have raised, and with the sponsors they have found, they will save almost a dozen Jewish children.

Epilogue
In June 1939, the five Cassandras meet the Kindertransport train bringing 'their’¯ children from Germany to England. After they watch the children meet their foster families, they admit to themselves that they probably aren’t going back to their old lives. Cassie goes home and packs away the original Cassie’s old toys, wondering where that girl is now, and recognizing that she is no longer the Cass Tepper she once was either.

**This is the first book in a 3-part series. The sequel, Chercote’s Hoard, is set in 1939-40 at an Elizabethan country house to which the school has been evacuated. The Cassandras foil a fascist plot to steal the British crown jewels, hidden in a tunnel under the gardens.
Each book in the series covers a school year, and follows the girls as they come of age in this very alien historical period, trying to function by the social standards of the past but bearing the expectations and attitudes of the future. In each book, they intervene differently in the past: in the first book it was a historical possibility, in the second, an event that would not have occurred had they not been there, and in the third, counter-factual history and the possibility of multiple histories.







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Comments by other Members



Luisa at 23:46 on 19 August 2007  Report this post
Hi,

I think this sounds like a gripping and well-thought-out story and it's perfect for your audience.

I wondered about:
On the other hand Sanda Pell, now at a 'god-forsaken girls’ boarding school with no effective means of heating,’¯ longs for her former life in London.
I assume she's the fifth Cassandra, but I think the 'on the other hand' confused me a little here and for a second I thought you were talking about the third Cassandra again. I wonder if you should put Bibi last in this paragraph to make it clearer. (I also wondered why Bibi would help with the bid to get back to the future if she didn't want to go back - maybe you need a hint of that or you could leave out the details about Bibi altogether in the synopsis?)

Anyway, these are very minor things I came up with. In general this was a great synopsis of what sounds like a wonderful story. Best of luck with the submission!

Luisa

jennywren at 07:20 on 20 August 2007  Report this post
Hi

You've done a great job on this synopsis - well done. It reads very well and conveys a complex story/concept effectively.

Can't think of any crits, sorry! Best of luck with your submission, though.

JennyWren x

Steerpike`s sister at 08:07 on 20 August 2007  Report this post
This sounds absolutely fascinating and totally original - a great mix of epic scale (something worth fighting for), real characters and fantasy/ time-slip. Based on this summary, I would certainly want to read more, if I were a publisher.
I found it easy to grasp what was going on - which is a big achievement with a plot as gothic as yours.
I really hope you get somewhere with this - I'd love to read the whole thing!

Account Closed at 15:21 on 20 August 2007  Report this post
Does sound fascinating, I wish you so much luck with Fidra and any other subs!

Can't think of anything to change either.

A05

Skippoo at 05:08 on 26 August 2007  Report this post
Wow! I's only read one chapter of your story and until I read this I didn't realise how original the plot is! Quite a crazy idea, all these time travelling Cassandras, but I love it!

Generally, as everyone says, this is a well-written synopsis, which gets the key points across well.

A few points: “red-headed 'Ginger’¯ Cazalet’ This read slightly oddly, as if you were using two words to mean the same thing when you didn't need to. Would it be better to say 'Ginger' and then just explain it's a reference to her hair colour?

I found it really clear to follow up until the other Cassandras are introduced, then at times I had to go back and re-read bits, e.g. to remind myself who Mary was when she's mentioned for a second time. So I'd see if there's any way to make this clearer, although I know it's not easy!

Also, wouldn't it be better to put the bit about the three part series in a covering letter?

Good luck with it!

Cath




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