A year-long sailing adventure might sound cool, but not to 14-year-old Libby, who resents being dragged along by her mother and stepfather. One day she does her angry best to slow them down, and now they’re playing catch-up to their companions, alone in dangerous waters, where modern-day pirates work. Suddenly everything is turned inside out: one person dead, her mother barely hanging on, and Libby left to struggle to save what she can and survive.
”A spray rips across the mainsail. A cockpit cushion explodes in shards of foam. Then the Thermos of tea disintegrates. Maybe I imagine it, but I think I see tea droplets hanging in the air. The noise is enormous but even so, I can hear Duncan, beside me, screaming at my mother. I think he’s telling her to drop. He’s scrambling out into the cockpit, running toward my mother. But nothing is faster than bullets. Not his words. Not me thinking, Oh good, they’re going to miss her.
”They don’t.” [from p. 40]