Escape from the USS Indianapolis

Gr 3-7–When 12-year-old Albie Whitman’s beloved brother Joe is assigned to the U.S. Navy ship Indianapolis, Albie stows away onboard the ship, refusing to be left behind. He is found out just before a huge explosion rocks the ship, and Joe urges Albie to quickly follow him to the radio room so that he can send a distress signal. He manages to send a partial signal, but the ship’s worsening conditions make abandoning the Indianapolis a priority for survival. Escaping the burning wreck ends up with Albie and Joe in the middle of an oil-slicked sea that’s filled with dead and dying sailors. By working together, the brothers manage to climb onto a floating piece of debris and eventually encounter other survivors. But the arrival of sharks rivals the lack of resources as a peril to survival. The action is nonstop in the fifth entry in Marino’s “Escape From” series, with physical deprivation a central focus from the opening scene, when Albie is desperately looking for a water fountain onboard the ship, to the long days and nights on the open sea, with the need for drinking water rising hourly. The desperate irony of being surrounded by water and not being able to drink is not lost on the characters nor on the readers. Marino emphasizes how relationships, between the brothers and between shipmates, give Albie and the other sailors opportunities to either overcome unfathomable circumstances or succumb to their most basic instinctual urges. In flashbacks, Albie’s story of parental loss is shared, as well as context for his unshakeable faith in Joe. Primary characters present as white, with a variety of ethnicities present in secondary characters.