Michael Morpurgo · 1983 · overland

Michael Morpurgo's 1983 novel, set during the Great Irish Famine. With their mother dying and their father long gone to America, Sean and Annie O'Brien leave their starving Irish village carrying an ancient family talisman, a twist of gold in the shape of a torc. They cross the Atlantic to America and journey on across the whole continent to find their father in the goldfields of California. The route is a famine emigrant's road from Ireland to the far Pacific.

1. 1
   West Cork

   In a famine-stricken village in the west of Ireland, Sean and Annie O'Brien set out with their grandmother's golden torc to follow their father across the sea.

2. 2
   Boston

   A crowded emigrant ship carries them across the Atlantic to Boston and the strange, teeming cities of the New World.

3. 3
   The Great Plains

   They strike out across the American continent, over the rivers and the wide grass plains, sharing the hardships of a country on the move.

4. 4
   San Francisco

   Across the mountains and deserts they come at last to California and the goldfields, and to the father they crossed a world to find.