Runaway at Sea

Darleen R. Golke is a high-school teacher-librarian in Abbotsford, B.C.

Sixteen-year-old Anne McLaughlin-Scott uses her parent’s absence to
escape her structured California life, neurotic controlling mother, and
henpecked father. By chance, Anne encounters a shipping agent for the SS
Ocean Spirit who offers her a job as utility steward aboard the cruise
ship bound for Vancouver on January 12, 1970. What seemed an ideal way
of reaching Vancouver and her free-spirited Aunt Ruth takes on nightmare
proportions as Anne works for a martinet in the ship’s hospital and
tends patients suffering gastrointestinal distress that is confirmed as
typhoid.

The Vancouver quarantine officer arrives, shuts down the ship, seconds
Anne as his onboard assistant, assigns her to accompany critically ill
patients transported to Vancouver hospitals, and relies on her
assistance in tracing the source of the typhoid outbreak. Unfortunately
Anne ultimately succumbs; she recovers, but her adventure almost costs
her life. Anne refuses to accede to her mother’s demands to return
home or to attend her grandmother’s boarding school. Instead she
successfully negotiates with her father to stay with Aunt Ruth and to
complete high school in Vancouver.

Not the usual runaway tale, Anne’s fast-paced adventure resonates
with the determination of a strong-willed and courageous young woman.
The detailed medical information Razzell incorporates reflects her years
of nursing and adds verisimilitude and depth to the plot. A remarkably
self-assured and mature teen, Anne successfully, in a singularly adult
fashion, copes with the horrors of typhoid, personal disappointments,
relations with the ship’s crew, and the search for the disease’s
source. Recommended.