Alone on a Wide Wide Sea by Michael Morpurgo

How far would you go to find yourself? This is the lyrical, life-affirming new novel from Michael Morpurgo.
When orphaned Arthur Hobhouse is shipped to Australia after World War II he loses his sister, his country and everything he knows. The coming years will test him to his limits, as he endures mistreatment, neglect and forced labour in the Australian outback. But Arthur is also saved, again and again, by his love of the sea. And when he meets a nurse whose father owns a boat-building business, all the pieces of his broken life come together.
Now, at the end of his life, Arthur has built a special boat for his daughter Allie, whose love of the sea is as strong and as vital as her father’s. Now Allie has a boat that will take her to England solo, across the world’s roughest seas, in search of her father’s long-lost sister. Will the threads of Arthur’s life finally come together?