The Castaways
A boy and dog trapped aboard the legendary ship, the Flying Dutchman, are sent off on an eternal journey by an avenging angel, roaming the earth throughout the centuries in search of those in need. Their travels lead them to Chapelvale, a sleepy nineteenth century village whose very existence is at stake. Only by discovering the buried secrets and solving the dust-laden riddles of the ancient village can it be saved. This will take the will and wile of all the people-and a very special boy and dog! Brian Jacques turns from Redwall to a very different sort of story, and succeeds admirably.
Where The Castaways keeps showing up
One of our editors' lists features this novel.
What you might want to know about The Castaways
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Brian Jacques tells the story of a boy-and-dog pair shipwrecked on a strange shore, woven through with Flying Dutchman-style legend and the long voyages of the eternal ship that carries them along the way.
Multiple novels share this title. The most-searched in recent years is The Castaways by Lucy Clarke (2021), a domestic suspense novel about a missing-plane mystery on a Fijian island. Brian Jacques wrote The Castaways of the Flying Dutchman, a different work.
No. The Castaways is a standalone domestic thriller. Lucy Clarke has written several other standalones, including The Hike and One of the Girls.
The Castaways is 336 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Castaways takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
The Castaways is a standalone novel by Brian Jacques, not part of a series.
The Castaways is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
