AUDIOBOOK
About
When fifteen-year-old Jack Sligo runs away from his loving Boston-Irish family, he hopes to get a summer job on a cruise ship. His dream becomes a nightmare when two strangers give him mysterious drinks in a waterfront saloon.
Jack wakes up, far at sea, shanghaied aboard an African freighter. The ship's first call is a remote jungle port in Venezuela where there's plenty of thieves, rum and women, but no opportunity for escape.
Manor Nelson, the ship's bo'sun, is his secret protector. A silent bond grows between them as they fight the inhumanity of the ship's master and Jack learns the cruelty of segregation.
But Jack needs more than friends to survive a vicious life at sea. He plans to escape with the help of seventeen-year-old Winston, a Jamaican, on the ship since he was twelve. He befriends men like stone silent Ebanks, whose black ancestors disgraced themselves as slave traders; Smitty, the dangerous mulatto seaman who is his boss; and "Chips," the ship's carpenter from Cayman Brac who knows all about God. Even a curious shipwreck in a jungle fails to sway Jack from his goal to find a way to get home.
Jack wakes up, far at sea, shanghaied aboard an African freighter. The ship's first call is a remote jungle port in Venezuela where there's plenty of thieves, rum and women, but no opportunity for escape.
Manor Nelson, the ship's bo'sun, is his secret protector. A silent bond grows between them as they fight the inhumanity of the ship's master and Jack learns the cruelty of segregation.
But Jack needs more than friends to survive a vicious life at sea. He plans to escape with the help of seventeen-year-old Winston, a Jamaican, on the ship since he was twelve. He befriends men like stone silent Ebanks, whose black ancestors disgraced themselves as slave traders; Smitty, the dangerous mulatto seaman who is his boss; and "Chips," the ship's carpenter from Cayman Brac who knows all about God. Even a curious shipwreck in a jungle fails to sway Jack from his goal to find a way to get home.