Victory

Newbery medal winner and Carnegie nominee Susan Cooper offers an outstanding contribution to the flood of novels inspired by the Trafalgar bicentenary.

Two children cross an ocean, two hundred years apart. Sam is a thirteen-year-old powder monkey aboard H.M.S. Victory, while Molly is a present-day English girl transplanted from London to America and fighting a battle of her own against loss and loneliness. Like Sam, Molly has lost her childhood, but will find her future with help from ‘the Nelson touch’.

For over thirty years Cooper has demonstrated her consummate skill in creating atmosphere, sympathetic characterisation and enthralling mystery. Sam's sea-borne hardships and Molly's psychological trauma interweave and coalesce in a meticulously researched text which may be read on several levels.