The Secret of History of Hatteras Island: A Guest Post by Newbery Honor Winning Author Sheila Turnage

Each year, thousands of vacationers visit North Carolina’s Outer Banks, whose shores often top Best Beaches lists. People drive over from the mainland, sail across the Pamlico Sound, or putter over on pug-faced ferries. They come for endless beaches and rolling dunes. For fishing and wild ponies. They come to climb the Hatteras Lighthouse.

Maybe, like me, they also come for Hatteras Island’s World War II history—a story I stumbled onto a half-century ago as I strolled a white sand beach w...