The Voyage

Philip Caputo's The Voyage is a multilayered novel that unfolds simultaneously as a mystery, a coming-of-age nautical adventure, a family drama, and a snapshot of an era. The questions, discussion topics, and author biography that follow are intended to enhance your group's reading of this gripping story that transcends time to become a testimony of the American experience. On a beautiful June day in New England at the end of the nineteenth century, Cyrus Braithwaite, a self-made Boston industrialist and former Florida ship wrecker, sends his three teenage sons off on their yacht and mysteriously tells them not to return until the end of the summer. His parting words--'It's a new century, boys'--ring in Nathaniel's, Eliot's, and Drew's minds as they set sail aboard the Double Eagle down the East Coast to the Florida Keys and are finally shipwrecked off the coast of Havana. Left behind are the boys mother, who is in a hospital in Boston recovering from a hysterectomy and Cyrus' son, the boys' half-brother, Lockwood. Today, at the end of the twentieth century, the details of the brothers' voyage are pieced together from ship logs and ancestral diaries by Sybil Braithwaite, their descendant. After picking up Will, their college friend in Maine, the boys decide to sail to the Florida Keys where Cyrus's last wreck, the Annisquam , lies below the remote key of Dry Tortugas. After days of sailing, they weather a storm that brings them near Beaufort, South Carolina, their mother's birthplace. In search of funds to repair their vessel, they visit their mother's wealthy aunt whom they have never met. While there, questions and suspicions about their mother's past begin to surface. Determined to reach their destination, the boys continue sailing the repaired boat to the Florida Keys in search of their father's former first mate who holds the secret of their Cyrus's last maritime adventure. Although they triumphantly reach the remains of the sunken Annisquam , the sea and the weather conspire against the sailors. They find themselves stranded in Havana with no easy passage home. As Sybil attempts to solve the mystery of her ancestors' journey, she unearths the family's deepest secrets and a shameful, inescapable truth. The supreme power of the sea, the enduring hand of history, and the strength of family collide in The Voyage 's explosive conclusion.