Publisher’s Weekly – (Ages 10-up)

“In the first of her projected Chronicle of Courage seafaring series, Torrey unspools a nail-biting adventure of two brothers, sons of a whaling captain who has died at sea. Nick, the narrator, is 15 when he and his older brother, Dexter, enlist for a tour of service aboard the whaler Sea Hawk in 1851. Quickly nicknamed Bones for his skinny frame, Nick endures relentless abuse from older shipmates and the cruel Captain Ebenezer Thorndike. Dexter, defending Nick, receives gruesome punishments, and one night Nick’s ribs and nose are broken from beatings, and rats and cockroaches thrown into his bed. The brothers’ plan to desert backfires and only intensifies Thorndike’s animosity toward them C as does the growing mutual attraction between Nick and the captain’s beautiful daughter. All of these events unfold against the backdrop of the whaling itself, a gory and messy business for which Nick’s father’s descriptions have left the boy unprepared: ‘The blood was hot and horrible and I wanted to cry. Whaling was nothing like I’d imagined.’ A shipwreck in the Arctic brings other dire challenges, all of them dramatic and many of them grim (a shipmate’s cannibalism, a grave raided by a bear). Torrey’s sharply focused prose gives each development the ring of credibility, and those who like survival tales will be rapt.“

The Bulletin

“It doesn’t matter to narrator Nicholas Robbins and his older brother Dexter that their whaling captain father was lost at sea. Whaling is in their blood, and as soon as Nicholas is old enough to sign onto a ship, the boys are off on their first tour. Openings aboard the Sea Hawk, under the command of Captain Thorndike, see to be a stroke of good luck, but soon the boys learn that even the spiffiest of vessels cannot compensate for a greenhorn’s lack of experience and that the captain is a far more severe master than they had reckoned on. Thorndike particularly dislikes Nicholas, who reminds him of his own lost son, and when the captain’s daughter, Elizabeth, takes an ill-concealed shine to the newcomer, Nicholas’s life becomes a misery. Torrey lades her novel with nearly every possible horror at sea, from shipwreck and sadistic shipmates, to frostbite, scurvy, and starvation, to cannibalism and a miraculous rescue by kindly Inuit. Torrey’s extensive research and sailing knowledge are evident in her precise descriptions, and the undercurrent of romance between Nicholas and Elizabeth may expand interest to a more tender-hearted readership than generally frequents sea stories. The core of the tale, however, is the relentless action of years of whaling history and lore conflated into the experience of one fictional teen, and adventure fans will hardly have time to draw breath between tribulations.“

Children’s Literature – (Ages 10-up)

“In the 1600’s, whales were common along U.S. coastlines. But 200 years of whale hunts depleted most species, and whaling ships of the 1850’s had to venture thousands of miles from home into Arctic waters to fill their holds with valuable whale oil. When 15-year-old Nick Robbins and his older brother Dexter sign on to a New Bedford, Massachusetts whaling ship, romantic boyhood notions of an easy, lucrative life are soon knocked out of their heads. Dangerous, backbreaking work, an abusive captain, and rats chewing their toenails at night soon take their toll. After his first horrifying experience butchering a whale, Nick resolves to someday escape the whaling life. The captain’s enchanting daughter Elizabeth befriends Nick, but he risks a flogging each time he speaks to her. When the ship runs aground in the Arctic and sinks, Nick saves the injured captain and Elizabeth, reaching shore with Dexter and a few survivors to face polar bear attacks and starvation, trapped on the icepack. Plucky Elizabeth becomes a hunter who outlasts the men in her determination not to succumb to hopelessness. Wandering lost one night, Elizabeth and Nick find a native encampment. The native people feed and clothe them all until the spring thaw. Powerful descriptions, authentic language and details, and an absorbing plot propel this superior historical fiction. A glossary of sea terms, a bibliography, and an author’s note describing whaling and the decimation of whale populations add to the book’s usefulness in the classroom.”