Summary

Jack Baker throws up the first time he sees the ocean. They’d flown from Kansas to Maine on a military cargo plane and it was a rough ride. His father, who he called “captain,” probably thought his son was a real baby. He was nine when his father left four years before to fight in the European Theater during World War II. In the Spring the war had started to wind down and Jack and his mother were looking forward to his father’s homecoming. But his father came home earlier than expected – not to celebrate, but for Jack’s mother’s funeral. He and his father seem like two strangers. Jack is 13 now with no mother and a father he barely knows.

They took a jeep to the Morton Hill Academy in Cape Fealty, Maine. It was the closest boarding school...