The Dark Canoe

Scott O'Dell's novles for young people are as notable for the range and variety of their themes as for the strength and beaty of their prose. The Newbery Award winning Is Of The Blue Dolphins spoke with simplicity and restraint of human lonliness and needed for human love. The King's Fifth a Newbury runner-up, was a powerfulwritten historical novle of the Spanish conquistadors and the corrupting power of the lust for gold. The Black Pearl, also a Newbury runner-up, was rich and subtlein its exploration of the forces of good and evil that have affected and motivated man from the beinning of time. The Drark Conoe, Scott O'dell's most recent book, is a novle of driving narrative force. It is told from the point of view of young Nathan , who sails from Nantucket with his older brothers Caleb and Jermy, to try and discover the facts behind the sinking of the Amy Foster. As the dramatic events unfold, both Nathan and the reader begin to understand the nature of the friction; that Caleb is the victom of some kind of madness, believing in some strange distorted way that he is Ahab, straight out of Moby Dick.