Journey to the River Sea

Life has taken a strange turn for Maia, an orphan living in London in the early 1900s. She must leave the cheerful school that has been her home to stay with unknown relatives in Brazil, on a plantation near the vast, mysterious Amazon River. Her classmates send her off with stories of man-eating alligators and flesh-munching fish. And her travel companion is a fierce-looking governess who wears a miniature Viking spear as a hat pin! But Maia isn't easily frightened, and the promise of a real home seems worth the danger.

She makes friends quickly—first with a homesick child actor whom she meets on the boat, then with a mysterious Indian boy, and finally with her governess, Miss Minton, whose grim looks mask a humorous mind and adventursome spirit.

Unfortunately, Maia's relatives are not so appealing. Greedy, hateful, and obsessed with re-creating England in the rain forest, the Carters and their nasty twin daughters make life almost unbearable for their young cousin. It is only when she is swept up in a mystery involving her Indian friend and an inheritance that Maia has a chance to escape the Carters and to have the kind of Amazon adventure no young English girl has had before her.

Eva Ibbotson, author of many best-selling fantasies, has written a grand adventure story, the kind that has thrilled generation after generation of readers.

See interior art by Kevin Hawkes.