CAST OFF

It's high stakes on the high seas for two twelve-year-olds in 1662. The resourceful Petra de Winter narrowly escapes her abusive father by stowing away on board a Dutch East India Company ship bound for Java. There she meets the intrepid Bram Broen, the mixed-race son of the ship's carpenter. Like Petra, there is seemingly nowhere in the world he belongs.

Petra is discovered, and, despite the crew's belief that she brings bad luck and should be drowned, convinces the surgeon that her sewing skills are invaluable. But she and Bram encounter danger everywhere: a murderous plot by mutineers, life-threatening storms, a typhoid outbreak, a battle with a pirate ship that kills Bram's father, and, finally, a shipwreck that could be the death of them or may bring them at last to a place they can call home.