Archipelago

Roffey’s stirring novel is one to place on the shelf next to Moby Dick and other notable seafaring stories. A flood in Trinidad destroys Gavin Weald’s house and drowns his baby boy. Desperate to shed his grief, he sails with his six-year-old daughter Ocean and their dog Suzy to the Galapagos, heedless of the danger. Roffey wastes no opportunity to infuse her story with metaphors and lessons that point Gavin toward redemption. He has owned the sturdy Romany for years, since finding it afloat without its skipper, who may or may not haunt her decks. Ocean is a deep old soul, whose posttraumatic-stress tantrums help her discover a philosophy that she can use to guide her dad to a kind of salvation from sadness. There is many a reference to Ahab and Starbuck, and events and encounters, from an albino whale to a woman’s tattoo (“further” it reads), are fraught with meaning. That this story has been told many times only speaks to its enduring resonance. Roffey (The White Woman on the Green Bicycle) is a masterful writer whose words are subsumed in the pictures they paint and the tales they spin. Agent: Isobel Dixon, Blake Friedmann (June)