The Cay
The Cay series, Book 1
Theodore Taylor
Laurel-Leaf Books
Fiction, MG? Adventure/Historical Fiction
Themes: Classics, Cross-Genre, Diversity, Felines, Seafaring Tales
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Description
American-born Phillip loves his life in the West Indies, where his father moved their family as part of his job with the oil companies, though his mother
still deeply misses their old home and friends back in Virginia. Now that there's a war on in Europe, his father's job - helping refine airplane fuel - is
more important than ever... and more dangerous than ever, when the German U-boats show up. When at last Dad agrees to let Mom go back to America with the boy,
Phillip protests, but there's nothing the boy can do to change grown-up minds. He'll be safer in Virginia, he's told, and the ship that's taking them is a
nondescript Dutch vessel that should be beneath German notice.
The Germans don't care what Phillip's parents think; their torpedoes take out the ship and scatter the survivors across the waves.
Phillip wakes in a lifeboat with a terrible headache, the ship's cat Stew Cat, and an old Black sailor named Timothy. The boy's mother had very strong
feelings about people of color, but as hope of rescue fades along with his eyesight, Philip has no choice but to trust Timothy with his life.
Review
The Cay is a classic tale of survival at sea, inspired by a tragic passage in the log of a Dutch vessel sunk by Germans in the Caribbean. Though white Philip was friendly enough (if at a distance) with the Black people of Curacao, being in a survival situation brings up all of his mother's teachings about race and the inherent difference/inferiority of certain people compared to his own heritage. He has to literally be blinded to finally see the lie in those teachings, as Timothy endeavors to not only help the boy survive but teach him what he needs to know to survive on his own. The boy does learn, if stubbornly at first, and even has to step up to help the old man when needs arise. As hours become days become months without rescue, at first at sea then on the waterless small island they eventually land on, the bond between boy and man (and cat) grows into something akin to family, though it is only later on that Phillip truly understands the scale of Timothy's sacrifices and efforts. Things move fairly well from start to finish, still readable and memorable today.