Julian Escobar, a young Jesuit seminarian who travels to the New World, is the only human survivor when a hurricane sinks a ship laden with gold. He struggles ashore, where he meets a Mayan girl. She teaches him about Kukulcan, the Feathered Serpent, a fair-skinned Mayan god, who sailed away centuries before. When Julian blows up a Mayan idol, he meets a Spanish dwarf who survived an earlier shipwreck. Cantu, the dwarf, persuades Julian to impersonate Kukulcan. Accepted as the returned god, Julian finds himself presiding over a human sacrifice.

From the reviews:

"It is a measure of [O'Dell's] seriousness and his skill that the suspense focuses not on events, which have so far been swift and stunning, inevitable and unexpected, or on the artfully foreshadowed intrigue, confrontations, and dangers that are sure to follow, but on Julian's moral choices and on what he will make of his false, exalted position."

Kirkus Reviews

"Julian's transformation from insecure human seminarian to pretend god [is] remarkable in its honest development."

School Library Journal

"[O'Dell] excels in his evocation of Julian ... The book is most powerfully an in-depth analysis of Julian's transformation from a prototypic Catholic seminarian into a manipulated masquerader. ... Most impressively, The Captive is a study of a character in transition."

Children's Literature Association Quarterly