Who is this mysterious boy Jack saw at the sand spit the day he nearly drowned? Why is Jack up the main mast on a sailing ship instead of on his friend¿s trawler? Jack, the lighthouse keeper¿s son at Neptune¿s Fingers, during the Great Depression, is about to find out as he is taken out of his time to experience the last days of The Kestrel, the ship whose spine is impaled on the rocks near his home. He learns more than he bargains for on board--his own family¿s history is interwoven with the lives of some of its sailors in a way that changes Jack forever.