Seventeen-year-old Alaric Dale Todd has never played a game of tennis, never swum a stroke, never ridden a horse or sailed a boat. His wealthy family kept him wrapped in cotton wool for years, convinced his heart was weak. Now his mother is dead, his father is distant, and Allie Todd feels like a ghost in his own life, a name that sounds like a girl's, a body that has never been tested, a spirit caged by other people's fears. Then his wild cousin Esther arrives, and everything ignites. A reckless drive with ponies through San Francisco streets becomes his breaking point: if he's going to die, he'll die having actually lived. He runs away to the rugged Northwest Coast, trading silk suits for salt-stained clothes, and finds himself aboard a sailing vessel where muscle is earned, not given, and a boy must become a man or drown. This is adventure as catharsis, Munroe's 1896 novel captures the furious hunger of a young man finally refusing to be small.
