The Art of Keeping Cool — Janet Taylor Lisle

February 1942. Robert and his mother, unable to work their Ohio farm without his father, a pilot for the Royal Canadian Air Force, relocate to his dad's family compound on the Rhode. Island coast. There he meets his strange but artistically gifted cousin Elliot, who teaches Robert "the art of keeping cool" around their intimidating bully of a grandfather. Meanwhile, Nazi submarines have attacked offshore U. S. warships, and in response, two enormous guns lumber through town to take up defense positions at the local fort complex. The town's collective fear and hatred is transferred to a reclusive German artist who lives just outside the city limits.

This is a taut, multilayered story of dangers lurking inside and outside a house, of old secrets, of deceptive enemies, and of two friends who must each find their own ways of fighting back.