The Sea-wreck Stranger

Download or read book The Sea-wreck Stranger written by Anna Mackenzie and published by Penguin Random House New Zealand Limited. This book was released on 2012-03-01 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Riveting post-apocalyptic YA fantasy, this is an award-winning thriller you can't put down. Winner of the Honour Award at the 2008 New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards, joint winner of the 2008 Sir Julius Vogel Awards and awarded the prestigious White Raven Award for outstanding children's literature. Ness is imaginative and independent. She questions and seeks meaning in a world that her elders would drain of all variety and joy. She lives on Dunnett Island, where people are in constant fear of all things that come from the sea, having lost many to the ocean’s toxins. They have been toughened by fear, loss and superstition and live a restricted, hard-working life. However, Ness, Ty and Sophie defy orders and explore in a concealed cove, where they discover a body washed ashore; a man who has been shipwrecked. Ness realises that his very existence heralds the possibility that there are other lands, other survivors, and also the possibility that the world’s seas are healing. She undertakes a foolhardy, courageous gamble when she decides to keep the stranger concealed and alive. All too soon, she risks everything, including her own life, to help him escape when her close-minded, ‘witchhunting’ community discovers her secret.