During a solo voyage in the Indian Ocean, a veteran mariner awakes to find his vessel taking on water after a collision with a stray shipping container. With his radio and navigation equipment disabled, he sails unknowingly into a violent storm and barely escapes with his life. With any luck, the ocean currents may carry him into a shipping lane -- but, with supplies dwindling and the sharks circling, the sailor is forced to face his own mortality.
Teacher Linda Sinclair balances her staid home life with an incredible passion for her subject, but her routine is forever altered when a former star pupil and his unsupportive father reenter her life.
Precocious yet sensitive teenager James has a deep perception of the world but no idea how to live in it. Finding no help from his divorced parents nor his older memoir-writing sister, he decides to reject the beliefs adults try to push on him, starting with the college career that is looming over his last summer in New York, and embarks instead on a search for wisdom through nontraditional means...
