Voyage of the Sparrowhawk

It’s the spring of 1919, just after the end of the Great War.

Ben’s father is dead and his elder brother, Sam, is missing somewhere in France. It won’t be long before the authorities realise that Ben is living alone and he will be taken into care.

Lotti is an orphan on the run from her cruel guardians and a lonely boarding school. Her only hope for a life worth living is to find her estranged French grandmother.

Although the pair make an unlikely team, and the chances of successfully crossing the English Channel on a barge are slim, Ben and Lotti feel they have nothing to lose by trying. And so, in the middle of a dark night, they set off for France aboard the barge Sparrowhawk.

Even readers who wouldn’t usually choose a historic adventure story will be hooked from the first page and gripped until the last. The action is fast-paced and fascinating but it’s the characters that really bring this epic tale to life.

There is no glossing over the devastation caused by a terrible war but it never overshadows the consequences being lived out on a personal level by every one of the characters.