How Many Days to America?: A Thanksgiving Story

Carrying only a change of clothes, parents and children trade their last valuables for passage into the dark. Soon the crowded vessel loses its motor in open water, leaving the travelers to knot their garments into a makeshift sail.

Days on the ocean turn into nights as drinking water and food run out. A little girl keeps asking her father how many days remain, waiting for their first glimpse of shore.

• Refugee Story: Leaving home means abandoning cherished possessions in the dead of night, from a family workshop to a mother’s garnet necklace traded on the quay.


• Quest Adventure: The perilous crossing brings startling trials and wonders across the sea, from cliffside gunfire and an elephant-sized barnacled whale to soldiers offering fruit.


• Found Family: Travelers bond over shared hardship as passengers catch fish together, gather drinking water in buckets, and draw comfort from an evening song promising that freedom is near.


• Also by This Author: Night Tree, A Turkey for Thanksgiving and That's What Leprechauns Do.