To the Edge of the World

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 27 JAN. 2003

"I require two years of your life, Mateo Mac as de vila. Two years that I cannot say will be easy, for we go to a destination unknown." With those words, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan's master-at-arms recruits a penniless 14-year-old orphan as cabin boy. Narrator Mateo sets off the summer of 1519 from Spain on the historic search for a "westward passage" to the Spice Islands. Launched with dreams of riches and glory, they soon discover that life at sea is dangerous and unpredictable. Mateo grows to manhood while learning the often bitter lessons of loyalty, friendship, honor and "the courage of endurance," through seasickness and storms, the sweet taste of first love, a brutal winter at the tip of Cape Horn, hostile natives and a stint as a castaway, as well as tensions in the armada that explode into bloody mutiny. "I have been forged with fire," he says upon his return to Spain one of only 18 that survived of the expedition's original 277 men. Torrey's absorbing narrative, with its appealingly clipped, slightly formal cadence, suits the period. She describes crew members suffering from scurvy and starvation ("Some men were mere bones, thumping the deck whenever they rolled over, a hollow clacking, sticks upon a drum") and the night sky ("stars white as salt") with equal ease. Drawing on 16th-century journals for historical detail, Torrey deftly maintains the taut thread of adventure that, along with the cast of memorable characters, keep the pages turning. Ages 12-up.