In the course of this highly unusual voyage up the length of the California coast, made by Scott O'Dell, his wife Elizabeth, and two men, there are tense moments, moments of quiet beauty, boyhood reminiscences, and the excitement of deep-sea fishing. Always, underneath, run the nagging doubts about Rod, young, flippant, stalked by disaster, who is captain for the cruise. Besides being the lively story of a long voyage, the book is a delightfully informal history of the Pacific coast from San Diego to the Columbia River. It is a potpourri of spellbinding stories from the past and present, spiced with a wealth of information on subjects ecological, historical, nautical, and personal.

From the reviews:

"Only Scott O'Dell could turn an uneventful cruise up the Pacific coast into a suspenseful adventure based entirely on his growing suspicions about the reliability of the Arctic Star's hired skipper and, at the same time, conduct a grand tour from the confines of the boat's cabin. ... While the Arctic Star is real, this is definitely a novelist's interpretation, the voyage a framework for all those scenes from the California past which the author has obviously long had in his imagination. It's worth going along."

Kirkus Reviews

"Interwoven in the adventures experienced by O'Dell on a small-craft voyage from San Diego, California to Portland, Oregon are vignettes of California history ... as well as informal lessons on ecology. ... Navigational problems, such as an account of the seven U.S. Navy ships that crashed into the cliffs of Honda Head rock in September of 1923, add tension, and the complex relationships between O'Dell, his wife and friend, and Rod Lambert, a handsome and daring young hired man, provide an interesting personal dimension."

School Library Journal

"Only so adept a writer [as Scott O'Dell] could achieve success with the mixture, sometimes spellbinding, consisting of a wealth of incidental information about history, marine ecology, and seamanship."

Horn Book

"a new triumph ... a truly engrossing book."

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

"... a complex book, a magnificent one."

New York Times