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Reviewed by Gary Stout for Readers' Favorite
Windswept by Al Sprague is a coming of age novel about two friends, Bob Hunter and Willie Deal, both young teens, who live in the Panama Canal Zone. They share a love of adventure and the water, and spend much time exploring the nearby jungle and fishing from shore or from their fifteen-foot dugout canoe. Yet, their desire to fish in deeper waters is unfulfilled so they convert their small boat by adding a sail and heading out beyond the Panama Canal buoys. A sudden storm comes up and they quickly find themselves pushed out into the Pacific Ocean, and then their adventure really begins. Their boat soon capsizes and the two youths must save themselves from drowning, then fight off hungry sharks, become marooned on a deserted island, and learn to fend for themselves as the months pass by.
Al Sprague has written a fun and educational adventure for young adults that includes plenty of action, hidden treasure, nasty drug traffickers, and vicious wild dogs. Sprague provides Windswept in both English and Spanish versions, which is unique but very educational, allowing young readers to translate words and make out sentence structure and grammar in a language that might not be their primary one. He also provides a line map to familiarize the reader with the story’s basic geography. Readers are cautioned that there are a few graphic scenes of violence when the boys encounter the wild dogs, but Sprague doesn’t dwell on them. Windswept is also filled with how-to details as the two young Robinson Crusoes must create tools for survival and build a means for getting off the island and back to civilization. Windswept is a good book to read on a lazy summer afternoon.
