Don­na Jo Napoli has writ­ten an engag­ing tale. It is a com­bi­na­tion of the Noah sto­ry on steroids and a Clan of the Cave Bear or maybe Robin­son Cru­soe nar­ra­tive. It seems that the world had grown so wicked, its peo­ple so cor­rupt, that God has decid­ed to try again. Its hero­ine, Sebah, her lit­tle broth­ers, and her fam­i­ly are among the inno­cent who are chal­lenged by the storm. Only she and anoth­er teenag­er sur­vive; he lives just long enough to save her life and impreg­nate her in a raft he has fash­ioned from bro­ken branch­es. She sees a huge boat and swims towards it, but he, a non-swim­mer who has got­ten weak­er, will per­ish. Grab­bing on to a stout rope hang­ing from its deck, she fol­lows her kit­ten who is already climb­ing up towards the deck of the boat. Sebah, how­ev­er, can’t make it until a strange lit­tle mon­key, a bonobo, descends the rope and push­es her up from behind. 

By now, dear read­er, you must want to find out what will hap­pen aboard that boat. Enough hap­pens between Sebah, her mys­te­ri­ous giant stow­away lover (includ­ing a graph­ic descrip­tion of child­birth), the ani­mal pair who have become her fam­i­ly, all the oth­er ani­mals and the love inter­ests, jeal­ousies, and dis­putes among Noah’s chil­dren to keep you read­ing from one cov­er to the next with­out quib­bling about the few mis­steps in dia­logue that some­times switch­es from our mode of expres­sion to one stiffer and more Bib­li­cal sound­ing. Recom­mended for ages 16 and up.