The Great Wide Sea, by M. H. Herlong
Posted by DBRLTeen on Tuesday, February 17th, 2009
The difficult thing about making a family work is deciding who gets what they want – the parents or the children? 15-year-old Ben is settled into his own life and looking forward to getting a car when he turns 16, but as so often happens in young adult novels his mother has recently and unexpectedly died. When catastrophes happen in life the young expect adults to know how to cope, but as Mrs. D. is sure you know adults are really just people like you and often can’t cope any better than you can. Ben’s father is devastated by his wife’s death, and hatches the scheme of selling the house and taking Ben and his brothers (Dylan, 11, and Gerry, 5) on a year-long sailing trip through the Bahamas. Perhaps this will help him forget and move on. All three boys hate the idea, but as you probably also know parents sometimes just won’t listen.
To make matters worse (this is a young adult novel as Mrs. D. mentioned before so matters always get worse) their father suddenly disappears (yes, disappears, it’s quite surprising) from their yacht in the middle of the Carribean, leaving Ben and his brothers to face life-threatening situations on their own. You’ll learn the things that can go wrong on a sailboat from this book, and goodness knows there are a lot of them! Ask Mrs. D. to tell you sometime about when she was caught in a monsoon off the Seychelles in her 30-foot ketch - she hasn’t been quite as fond of mizzenmasts since!
Ben finds himself facing great danger because of the selfish decisions of his father. How can Ben ever forgive him? Mrs. D. recommends The Great Wide Sea, by M. H. Herlong, because we all need to learn how to forgive.
Check out the author’s website at www.thegreatwidesea.com!