Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year

"McCaughrean takes the bones of a real event, wraps it in immersive, imaginative detail and thoroughly real emotion, and creates an unforgettable tale of human survival. A masterpiece." - Kirkus Reviews

Winner of the 2018 Carnegie Medal! New from Michael L. Printz Award-winner Geraldine McCaughrean comes an extraordinary story of eight boys stranded on a rock in the middle of the sea, left to fight for their survival.

Every time a lad went fowling on the stacs, he came home less of a boy and more of a man. If he went home at all, that is.

Every summer Quill and his friends are put ashore on a remote sea stac to hunt birds. But this summer, no one arrives to take them home. Surely nothing but the end of the world can explain why they’ve been abandoned - cold, starving, and clinging to life, in the grip of a murderous ocean. How will they survive such a forsaken place of stone and sea?

This is an extraordinary story of fortitude, endurance, tragedy and survival, set against an unforgettable backdrop of savage beauty.

A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books

"McCaughrean, who won the Printz Award for The White Darkness (2007), slips into the cracks of the human soul, dissecting with compassion the many paths that a person might take when confronted with such a challenge." (Booklist, starred review)