IF EVER I RETURN AGAIN

More “Dear America” than True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, this chatty, awkwardly titled epistolary tale takes a mid–19th-century child on a 19-month voyage aboard a New England whaler with her mother and her father, the captain. Gathering a small menagerie and a flirtatious young third mate for company, Celia experiences terrifying storms, the gruesome business of whale butchering, long stretches of boredom relieved by birthdays, Christmases, and occasional stops to “gam” (visit) other ships. There is also a welcome layover in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) that turns tragic when her mother has, then loses, a baby. At last, discouraged by the scarcity of whales, Celia’s father decides to turn homeward, only to succumb to a mortal illness that leaves the two women to derail an attempted mutiny and to navigate back around Cape Horn to Massachusetts. Demas (Littlest Matryoshka, 1999) laces Celia’s narrative with happy encounters and places her amidst a cast of familiar, well-defined character types, so that her journey is more a coming-of-age adventure than a tally of crushing disasters. Readers will be carried along by the quick pace and the ever-present sense that fortune and misfortune lurk just beneath the next rolling wave. (Fiction. 11-13)