Alone on a wide wide sea by Michael Morpurgo
Published by HarperCollins

This is the story of a boy, Arthur Hobhouse, who was sent to Australia with a shipload of other orphans shortly after the Second World War, and of his daughter, Allie, who sets out as a lone yachtswoman 60 years later to look for the sister he had to leave behind. Arthur’s early years in Australia are very hard. He is sent to a farm with a group of other boys, where they are treated like slaves by the fanatical farmer. He eventually manages to escape with a friend and they find a better life, with help from kinder people. Arthur finds he has a talent for designing boats, but it is many years before he feels able to settle down, and he never forgets his sister, last seen on the quay at Liverpool.