The Cay

THE CAY is a tense and compulsive survival story by Theodore Taylor of a young boy and an old man adrift on the ocean, then marooned on a tiny, deserted island. It is also a fascinating study of the relationship between Phillip, white, American, and influenced by his mother's racial prejudices, and the black man upon whom Phillip's life depends.

Phillip is excited when the Germans invade the small island of Curacao. War has always been a game to him and he's eager to witness it first hand - until the freighter he and his mother are travelling on to the USA is torpedoed. Philip wakes to find himself adrift on a small raft in the middle of the ocean with an old West Indian man.