Finalist for the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children's Book Award
Orphaned and plagued with the grief of losing everyone he loves,
fifteen-year-old Abdul has made a long, fraught journey from his
war-torn home in Baghdad, only to end up in The Jungle -- the squalid,
makeshift migrant community in Calais.
When an altercation at the soup kitchen ends up with him accidently
stabbing a policeman, Abdul has to flee, and in desperation he takes a
spot in a small boat heading to England. A sudden skirmish leaves the
boat stalled in the middle of the Channel, the pilot dead, and four
young people remaining -- Abdul; Rosalia, a Romani girl who has escaped
from the white slave trade; Cheslav, gone AWOL from a Russian military
school; and Jonah, the boat pilot's ten-year-old nephew.
The four of them end up hijacking a yacht and, despite their fear and
mistrust, they form a kind of makeshift family. And as the authorities
close in on them, they find refuge in an unusual place -- a child's
secret cave on the English coast.