Benjamin's father continues to come under their surveillance, and all threads seem to lead back to him. Much to the surprise of both Janie and Benjamin, however, the secret schemes they are witnessing seem to have an unexpected center. He drags Janie into his observations, and the two quickly become embedded in the mystery around them. To practice for his future career, Benjamin has been keeping an eye out in his neighborhood, and discovered a scheme involving secret messages and unobserved rendezvous. Benjamin, however, has other, much more exciting plans – he wants to be a spy. Benjamin is blunt and more forthright than most, and he and Janie bond over Benjamin's jokes about the absolute uselessness of the duck and cover air raid drills that the kids take part in each month.īenjamin is much more daring than his father, who is mild-mannered and sweet and hopes that Benjamin will take over his apothecary shop when he retires. Despite the unpleasantness of her current situation, Janie quickly makes one new friend, Benjamin Burrows whose father is a prominent local apothecary. The prep school where she has been enrolled is full of rich, prissy girls that she doesn't want to befriend, the uniforms are itchy, and she has to learn Latin, a language that she can't wrap her head around. Though Janie's parents are thrilled to be able to continue the work that they love, Janie is less amused by the move. Concerned about their ability to continue working, Janie's parents flee with their daughter to the United Kingdom where they begin working under pen names on an adaptation of Robin Hood and enroll Janie in a prep school. Janie, a fourteen-year-old girl from Los Angeles, has recently moved to London with her parents, television writers who have accidentally gained the unwanted attention of the House Un-American Activities Committee, the organization responsible for ensuring that Communists haven't infiltrated the American media.

The Apothecary is the first book in the Apothecary Trilogy and is followed by The Apprentices and The After-Room. Set in 1952 at the height of the Cold War, the book is centered on the disappearance of Benjamin's father, who was kidnapped and is now the center of a plot involving Russian spies and nuclear weapons. The Apothecary by Maile Meloy is the first book in a historical fantasy series for middle-grade readers following Janie, a fourteen-year-old who recently moved from Los Angeles to London, and Benjamin Burrows, the son of a local apothecary.

Benjamin burrows the apothecary