Dactyl Hill Squad

A middle-grade historical fantasy novel, the story is set in an alternate 1863 New York City where domesticated dinosaurs serve as transportation, beasts of burden, and war mounts.

Magdalys Roca is a twelve-year-old Cuban-born orphan living at the Colored Orphan Asylum in Manhattan. She refuses to answer to "Margaret Rocheford," the Americanized name the matrons insist on using. Her brother Montez, her only remaining family in the United States, left six weeks ago to join the Union Army; her sisters Julissa and Celia were taken back to Cuba years earlier by a mysterious man. When the matron Henrietta Von Marsh calls her Margaret before a field trip, Magdalys nearly misses the outing. She boards a triceratops-drawn wagon and notices something unsettling: The old trike, Varney, seems to respond to her thoughts, stopping when she wills it.

The wagon heads through an eerily silent city. Magistrate Richard Riker, a menacing official wearing a tyrannosaurus medallion, stops them and demands proof the orphans are not fugitive slaves. Magdalys mentally commands Varney to rear up, creating a distraction, and Riker lets them proceed.

At the theater, Magdalys retrieves a withheld letter from Von Marsh's purse. It is from Private Tennessee Summers, who served with Montez, and reports that Montez was struck in the head at Milliken's Bend and was unconscious when last seen. Magdalys resolves to find him.

A fire erupts in the theater and the crowd stampedes. Magdalys searches for her fellow orphans: Two Step, her closest friend; Mapper, who has an uncanny sense of geography; the quiet, alert Amaya; and Little Sabeen, the youngest of the group. Two Step is trapped on the burning roof. A fire brigade arrives with a brachiosaurus. Magdalys mentally commands it, climbs into its saddle, and rescues Two Step from the roof. Cymbeline Crunk, a leader of the theater's all-Black Shakespearean troupe, scatters a local gang with a shotgun and explains that the New York Draft Riots have erupted; white citizens furious about conscription are attacking Black New Yorkers. Magdalys realizes Riker knew the violence was coming and let them walk into danger.

Fleeing north on the brachy, the group finds the Colored Orphan Asylum burned to the ground. The beloved custodian Mr. Calloway has been lynched outside. Amaya leads Magdalys into the ruins to retrieve the orphans' personal files, arguing that these incomplete records are all they have of their identities.

Riker pursues them on a raptor with riders from the Kidnapping Club, an organization that captures Black New Yorkers and sells them into slavery. After a running battle, Cymbeline and Amaya wound Riker and fell his raptor. The group escapes to a ferry port on the East River. While waiting, the orphans read their files. Magdalys's file reveals she was delivered to the asylum by a man named Harrison Weed of 893 Mulberry Street, the same man who took her sisters to Cuba.

Crossing by ferry to Brooklyn, Cymbeline leads them to Dactyl Hill, a neighborhood teeming with pterodactyls that serves as a safe haven for Black New Yorkers. They shelter at the Bochinche, a bar run by Miss Bernice, and meet David Ballantine and Louis Napoleon of the Vigilance Committee, an organization protecting free Black New Yorkers and fugitive slaves from kidnapping. Amaya, who is half Apache, confides to Magdalys that her father, General Cuthbert Trent, is a Union officer who trained her as a soldier in secret before placing her in the orphanage. A letter from Trent was lost during the riots.

The orphans settle into Dactyl Hill, sweeping chimneys on dactylback. Magdalys confirms her power is real: She can hear dinosaurs' thoughts and direct them mentally. Despite warnings, she and Two Step visit a silo on the edge of town, where she senses a huge chained creature through agonized mental cries. David recruits the orphans as the Vigilance Committee's eyes and ears. The five name themselves the Dactyl Hill Squad.

Magdalys volunteers for a mission to Manhattan, secretly planning to visit Weed's home. She enters through a chimney and finds documents bearing the initials "K of the G C," standing for the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret pro-slavery society. She discovers a note from Riker ordering forty kidnapped orphans transported south that night on a ship called the Ocarrion. Weed's housekeeper, Miss Josephine Du Monde, catches Magdalys but decides to burn the apartment rather than face Weed's wrath. Magdalys grabs armfuls of documents, and the group escapes on dactylback as Josephine sets the fire.

Back at the Bochinche, the squad decodes the papers and confirms Weed's central role in the Knights' network. David is furious Magdalys disobeyed orders but recognizes the intelligence is critical. Overwhelmed and desperate to reach Montez, Magdalys slips away to the silo and frees the chained creature, an enormous pteranodon she names Stella. She had planned to ride Stella south but instead watches the pteranodon soar into the sky. Two Step follows and begs her to stay. Accepting she cannot abandon the squad, Magdalys returns.

The rescue plan takes shape. David reveals the Vigilance Committee has access to a mosasaurus, a massive sea predator. Everyone agrees Magdalys is the only person who could ride it. At Pier 54, she meets Redd, a teenage pirate and Vigilance Committee operative who frees enslaved people from ships. Redd challenges Magdalys to own her power openly, sharing his own experience of learning to declare his identity despite being assigned a different gender at birth. Magdalys finally says it aloud: She can wrangle dinos with her mind.

The mosasaurus, which Magdalys names Missy, charges the Ocarrion, where the squad and Vigilance Committee agents are already fighting slavers. After a fierce battle, the ship is taken and the kidnapped orphans freed. But plesiosaur-mounted artillery units sent by Riker close in. David orders Magdalys to take the youngest orphans to Red Hook on Missy. At Red Hook, she discovers a trap: David, Louis, Cymbeline, Amaya, Sabeen, and others stand in chains on a floating platform. Magdalys wrenches Missy aside at the last second, smashes through Riker's blockade, and escapes into the darkness.

Regrouping at the Bochinche, the squad learns the prisoners are held at the Dactyl Hill Penitentiary. Mapper produces a detailed floor plan from memory. They assault the fortress: Halsey Crunk, Cymbeline's brother, distracts guards while Redd and Josephine charge the gate. Magdalys, Two Step, and Mapper dive on dactylback into the courtyard. Two Step kills a charging rider to save Magdalys, and the trauma shakes him deeply. Magdalys frees the prisoners with stolen keys.

Riker rides a tyrannosaurus through the gates. Magdalys commands three riderless triceratopses at once and charges. After a brutal clash, she leaps onto the tyrannosaurus. Stella swoops from the sky, pins the beast, and devours Riker at Magdalys's command.

Near dawn, Magdalys prepares to fly south on Stella to find Montez. The rest of the Dactyl Hill Squad reveals they are all coming, rucksacks packed. Cymbeline joins as well. Marietta, a matron from the orphanage, gives Amaya the lost letter from her father. Amaya takes it silently and shoves it unopened into her bag. Magdalys realizes that home is not a place but the people she carries with her. Stella launches into the sky, and the Dactyl Hill Squad flies south toward Montez, toward war.