What's the Name of That Book??? discussion
► UNSOLVED: One specific book
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YA book. 2 kids run away and float down a river on a skiff. Read in 1990s.
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Amanda
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Aug 08, 2024 08:50AM
read this book back in the mid to late 90s so it could have been published earlier. What I remember is is there’s a girl that runs away from home and takes a skiff (type of small boat) and begins a journey down a river. Somewhere along the way a boy joins her and he somehow gets injured on his leg and it’s getting infected. They eventually land on an island and they find a cabin that they think is deserted but an older guy lives there. He teaches them how to live off the land and he teaches the boy how to dig in the sand for clams and oysters. He spends his days in the saltwater shucking the shellfish and one day he runs into the cabin and is excited to show the girl that the saltwater is healing his leg. That’s all I can remember
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Just to add why I suggested Angels of the Swamp - here are some quotes from a copy on archive.org (https://archive.org/details/angelsofs...). Taffy is the girl, Jody is the boy with the infected leg and Jeff is the man they meet when they're living on Pelican Island.Taffy stood barefoot on the port side of the skiff with a long, slender poling oar balanced in her hands.
Jody was expected, according to the doctor's instructions, to soak his leg twice a day. This morning was the first time in weeks he had slipped up. And now the throbbing ache was back. Infection had built up.
There was no scarcity of clams in the bay waters of Pelican Island, and that night she filled her sack with as many as she could drag back.
"Jody's infection didn't get to the healing stage by itself," she reminded the two men at the end of her story. "It was a combination of peroxide, endless permanganate soakings, and constant exercise in the gulf waters that kept the wound open and washed clean. Jody has spent at least half his waking hours walking in the water, moving around to help that wound."
