Alone on a Wide Wide Sea

Author: Morpurgo, Michael

Interest age: from c 10 years

Published on 4 June 2007 by HarperCollins Publishers (HarperCollins) in the United Kingdom.

How far would you go to find yourself? The lyrical, life-affirming novel from the bestselling author of Private Peaceful and War Horse.

There were dozens of us on the ship, all up on deck for the leaving of Liverpool, gulls wheeling and crying over our heads, calling good-bye…

That is all I remember of England.

When six-year-old orphan Arthur Hobhouse is shipped to Australia after WWII he loses his sister, his country and everything he knows. Overcoming enormous hardships with fellow orphan Marty, Arthur is finally saved by the extraordinary people he meets and by his talent for boat-design and sailing. Now he has built a special boat for his daughter Allie – a solo yacht designed to carry her to England in search of his long-lost sister. Will the threads of Arthur's life finally come together?

I was there on the quayside to see Allie take her out for the first time, saw her dancing through the waves, and I knew I'd never built a finer boat.