Rudyard Kipling · 1897 · sea

Kipling's only novel set entirely in North America, written in Vermont. Harvey Cheyne, fifteen and the spoiled son of a railroad millionaire, smokes a cigar on the deck of a transatlantic liner, is sick, and goes over the rail - and is fished out by a Gloucester schooner whose skipper flatly declines to turn round.

1. 1
   New York

   He boards a liner for Europe having been suspended from school for bad behaviour, with his father's money and no idea what it is for - and a first-class deck, a stolen cigar and an Atlantic swell take care of the rest.

2. 2
   The Grand Banks

   Pulled out of the sea off Newfoundland by Manuel, a Portuguese fisherman, and put aboard the We're Here - where he offers Disko Troop cash to sail him home and is knocked down for calling the man a thief.

3. 3
   The Virgin

   A summer on the fishing grounds: dories, trawls, salt cod, the shoal they call the Virgin, a collision in fog, and a boy who has never worked learning to gut fish at a hundred and fifty a day.

4. 4
   Gloucester

   The schooner comes in with a full hold in September and Harvey telegraphs his parents, who do not believe it - and his father crosses the continent by private train in eighty-seven hours to see for himself.

5. 5
   San Diego

   The Cheynes take him home to California, and the last chapter is the two of them talking as equals for the first time - and the son of the railroad going back east to learn the business from the bottom.