With her parents on vacation and her stern grandmother's arrival delayed, sixteen-year-old Anne McLaughlin-Scott is on her own for a day in the exciting San Francisco of 1970. Anne feels stifled at home and wants to live with her free-spirited Aunt Ruth in Vancouver, BC. So when she encounters a childhood crush, now a draft dodger heading north himself and investigating a mystery aboard a Vancouver-bound cruise ship . . . well, everything seems to be pushing Anne in the same direction.Anne finagles a job aboard the Ocean Spirit only to find herself caught up in a typhoid outbreak and torn between her duty to sick passengers, her loyalty to her shipmates and her desire to help the heroic doctor investigating the incident.In Runaway at Sea, well-known YA author Mary Razzell draws on actual incidents and her own background in nursing to create a gripping medical adventure aboard a cruise ship. And in Anne McLaughlin-Scott, Razzell creates a memorable young heroine whose courage and moral compass serve her well as she navigates the shoals of family conflict, budding sexuality and looming adulthood.