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.