No Safe Place
Finalist for the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children's Book Award
Orphaned and plagued with the grief of losing everyone he loves, fifteen-year-old Abdul has made a long, fraught journey from his war-torn home in Baghdad, only to end up in The Jungle — the squalid, makeshift migrant community in Calais.
When an altercation at the soup kitchen ends up with him accidently stabbing a policeman, Abdul has to flee, and in desperation he takes a spot in a small boat heading to England. A sudden skirmish leaves the boat stalled in the middle of the Channel, the pilot dead, and four young people remaining — Abdul; Rosalia, a Romani girl who has escaped from the white slave trade; Cheslav, gone AWOL from a Russian military school; and Jonah, the boat pilot's ten-year-old nephew.
The four of them end up hijacking a yacht and, despite their fear and mistrust, they form a kind of makeshift family. And as the authorities close in on them, they find refuge in an unusual place — a child's secret cave on the English coast.
- Author
- Deborah Ellis
- Format
- hardcover
- Pages
- 208
- Publisher
- Groundwood Books
- Language
- english
- ISBN
- 9780888999733
- Settings
- Iraq
- Genres
- war, survival, adventure, teen, abuse, childrens, contemporary, novels
- Release date
- 2010
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