The children in Hilda van Stockum's books are always as realistic as they are interesting, and they have just the sort of adventures that other children like reading about.

Francie O'Sullivan is as charming a little Irish boy as you will hope to meet. For months he lay patiently in a Dublin hospital. Then he suddenly decided to go home and stole out of the building when no one was looking. He started walking—but in the wrong direction! Many were his unusual adventure in Sligo, in the windswept Aran Islands and elsewhere before he returned to his family, whom many readers will already know in The Cottage at Bantry Bay.

From the dust jacket