The Great Quest

The Great Quest by Charles Hawes is an adventure story for children. It was a Newbery Honor book in 1922. George Varian drew the pictures. The Atlantic Monthly Press was its publisher.

Story

The story happens in 1826. It starts in Topham, Massachusetts. Topham is not a real town. In the story, Joe Woods lives in Topham with his uncle, who is named Seth Woods. Seth Woods has a friend named Cornelius Gleazen. Cornelius is a very bad man. Cornelius makes Seth sell all his things and use the money to buy a ship. Cornelius tells Seth that they will sail the ship to Guinea in Africa and dig up a lot of gold that Cornelius has buried there. Seth takes Joe and some other men with him on the trip. But when the ship stops in Cuba, Cornelius tells Seth and Joe that he lied. He really wants to take a lot of the people who live in Guinea away from their homes and bring them back to Cuba. He will sell them to people who live in Cuba. The people from Guinea will be slaves.

Seth and Joe are very angry, but they cannot stop Cornelius. They have to go to Guinea. In Guinea, they rescue a white girl. Her father was a preacher in Guinea, but the people who lived in Guinea did not like him. Cornelius and Seth die in Guinea. Joe and the other men who were on the ship travel back home from Guinea to Massachusetts. On the way, they stop in South America. One of the men stays there. When they get home, Joe marries the white girl that he rescued in Guinea, and they live happily ever after.

Other websites

• The Great Quest on Project Gutenberg