Luke Halpin

A teenage boy sent to spend the summer with his eccentric uncle on the Florida coast befriends a remarkable dolphin and takes on local bad guys who are polluting the water. Sandy Ricks is sent by his mother to Coral Key, a rustic island in the Florida Keys, to spend the summer with his uncle, Porter Ricks. He dislikes everything about his new environment until a new friend, a dolphin named Flipper, comes into his life. It brings him and Porter together and leads him on the summer adventure of a lifetime. —Wayne Coleman <waynecoleman@swbell.net>

Boy Sandy and Dolphin Flipper are in the Bahamas where they pester a bunch of outlaws holding an English family captive. While widowed Porter Ricks is away at school learning to be a park ranger, his teen-aged son, Sandy, under adult supervision from a neighbor, remains at the family home in the Florida Keys with his pet dolphin, Flipper. While Po (as Porter is called by most) is away, Sandy learns that the family home, built on state land, is being torn down to make way for a highway. In turn, Sandy would be sent to live with relatives, while Flipper would be sent to the seaquarium permanently. Not wanting to be separated from Flipper, Sandy, using his skiff, runs away with Flipper. A distraught Po returns home to look for his son. Meanwhile, the Hopewell family from Britain are vacationing in the area. Their sailboat is hijacked by three escaped convicts, who take the father, Halsey, hostage, and set the three Hopewell women - mother Julia, and teen-aged daughters Gwen and Penny - adrift, they who eventually land on the island where Sandy is hiding. Not wanting to be detected since he doesn't want to be sent home, Sandy and Flipper secretly do whatever they can to help the women, Penny the only one who knows about Sandy and Flipper. When the convicts realize that their hostage is wealthy, they figure that they would be better off with all four Hopewells as hostages in exchange for ransom. But when the convicts return to the island, Sandy and Flipper are waiting. —Huggo

Sandy is distraught when, having saved Flipper by pulling out a spear, his father insists the dolphin be released. A grateful Flipper, however, returns the favor when Sandy is threatened by Sharks. The Florida Keys have been hit by hard times of late. First, a red plague kills off much of the fish in the area. And second, Hurricane Hazel unexpectedly changes course to hit the Keys. Regardless, the Ricks family - fisherman father Po (short for Porter), wife Martha, their preteen son Sandy, and Sandy's pet pelican Pete - live in all its aspects by the sea, even during these hard times. When Sandy witnesses the accidental spearing of a dolphin, he, on his own, decides to find the dolphin to put it out of its misery. Upon finding the injured dolphin, Sandy, not having the heart to shoot him, decides instead to tow the dolphin home. With some care and love, Sandy and Martha nurse the dolphin back to health. Sandy wants to keep the dolphin, who he's named Flipper, but Po ultimately releases Flipper, who he sees as "the enemy": a creature who is on the hunt for whatever short supply of fish there are around the Keys. But Po learns that friends - what Flipper and Sandy are to each other - help each other unconditionally. —Huggo