Emma Jane Dance: The Swimmer Who Tried

This is probably the most exiting underwater fantasy you will ever read
It is the story of Emma Jane Dance, a fifteen-year old bullied schoolgirl from Tengarth, a poverty stricken town on the North East coast of Wales. She is an accomplished swimmer, training in the local swimming pool, but her mother and father are getting divorced because of her mother's affair with a weird new resident in the town, Aled Kingsley, the landlord of the local public house. Emma cannot stand the sight of him and believes there is something inherently evil a bout him. Her only true friend is Thomas Carrington, someone she has known from a very young age and he is someone who has secretly loved her for years. Living in the same street as Emma is the colourful Little family, a family of four who are all grossly overweight and who always dress in brightly coloured clothes. Returning home one autumn evening, as she passes the Littles' home, she discovers a floating ball of blue/white light hovering above their gate. Emma is shocked when the ball rises in the air and leads her into the Littles' home. Inside, she is confronted by the Little family who ask if they can swim with her in the pool, for she has keys so that she can train anytime the desire takes her. She has no idea why the family want to do this but she agrees.
In the water of the pool, the Littles' turn from overweight humans into beautiful merfolk, mermen and mermaids and they tell Emma an amazing tale.
They tell her that she is the last person on earth who has Poseidon's genes, the only person related to the Lord of the Oceans and the Seas. She is Poseidon's Lost Daughter. And she has a mission. Amphitrite, Poseidon's wife is having her mind turned by evil being beneath the waves and is considering releasing the souls of the bad dead from the sand and the rock of the sea beds, where the bad dead go when they die. The release will be a catastrophe for the planet Earth for the bad dead will kill the oceans and the seas and turn the planet into a wasteland where only evil reigns. The merfolk inform Emma that she is the only human who can stop that from happening; she is the only person who can save the world.
And she only has just over fourteen days to do so.
Emma is shocked at the revelations and takes time to consider, but she only has a small time available, for on Saturday she has to go. She decides to give the attempt a try and is told that she will have to swim across the Atlantic and across the Pacific and swim down into Challenger Deep, the deepest part of all the oceans and seas where Amphitrite lives and is in the thrall of evil. It is an impossible task, no human could swim so far in such a short time, but she has the Tyllaax, the blue/white ball that was moulded by Poseidon's own hands, a magic ball that will tow her across the thousands of miles very quickly indeed. The Glogmol Leaf helps Emma breathe beneath the waves and skins, a helmet and a watery face mask protect her from both the pressure and the coldness of the deep oceans.
So on the Saturday morning, at 8:00 a.m. she begins her great trek across oceans and seas and through hidden underwater tunnels in an attempt to convince Amphitrite that mankind is still alive and well and that she must not release the dead. Only merfolk, Aqua-people and the air breathers of the sea are on Emma's side; whales, dolphins, porpoises; while all the fish; sharks, tuna, swordfish, sailfish, jellyfish and many, many more are against.
Against all the odds will Emma succeed, will she save the world, will she survive all the attacks made on her?
Swim with the fishes, meet the Whales, be attacked by swordfish, chased down by hundreds of tuna.
The most exciting underwater fantasy you will ever read.
A brilliant novel from the imagination of Sally Dillon-Snape, a superior new writer who now sits among us.