In the 1860s, Ailish O'Connor, a young Irish girl, goes aboard a telegraph-cable placing ship (which is laying cable from Ireland to Newfoundland), The Great Eastern, to reclaim a valuable horse statue stolen from her father by one of the men who works aboard the ship. There, Ailish, who is said to have the second sight (which has kept her and her father from abject poverty) is assisted by the ghost of a bash boy, Davy Jones. In spite of her supernatural powers, however, Ailish isn't able to figure out that the boy isn't actually living, and has to be told at the end of the book. Ailish also makes friends with a fellow Irishman, Paddy Whelan, who is traveling to Newfoundland to start over with family already living there. Ailish's enemy, Rufus Dalton, is also Paddy's enemy. Dalton makes frequent claims that Paddy is a Fenian who is trying to sabotage the laying of the cable, so that he, Dalton, can access the 80 pounds that Paddy is bringing to his family. The novel tells of Ailish's adventures aboard the huge ship trying to regain her father's stolen property and clear Paddy of Dalton's malicious charges. Oddly, the power she has doesn't assist her in the least. The details about the laying of telegraph lines are somewhat confusing, and without drawings of any sort, I think it would be hard for the target age group of 9-12 to picture how the mechanisms work. The story had some promise but the details don't add up. Characterization is weak and inconsistent (a heavy drinking rather stupid father has given up drink by the end of the book, for example), and, overall, the novel is uninteresting and plodding. Ailish neither speaks nor acts like an early teenaged girl. Not recommended. ( )