The Voyage Of The Morning Light: A Novel

"Twelve-year-old orphan Kay Ward accompanies her older half sister, Thea, aboard a merchant ship in 1912, traveling from Nova Scotia to Micronesia and home again, under the command of Kay’s new brother-in-law. On one of their stops, Thea trades some tobacco for a little boy who is then raised as Kay’s brother. One might fear that the big issues raised by this beautiful novel – questions of colonialism, what “goodness” means, cultural differences – might sink it into didacticism, but the amazing descriptions of the voyages themselves and the three-dimensionality of the characters, especially Kay, make this a journey worth taking."