Lokkiluoto by Jules Sandeau is a novel written in the mid-19th century. Set on the Breton coast, it follows the frail boy Mark, his devoted mother, and a band of local children as the sea first restores health and then lures them into danger. The story promises a youthful coastal adventure threaded with family feeling, moral testing, and the perilous fascination of the ocean.The opening of the novel frames Pouliguen’s stark seascape in a preface to a young reader, then begins with Mrs. Henry bringing her sickly son Mark to the shore for recovery. After the deaths of two older boys and ominous signs in Mark, a candid doctor urges “nature” as the only real healer; life by the sea revives the child, who becomes enthralled by the ocean. Through the mother’s letters we see his vigor return, his fixation on boats grow, and a brief inland excursion that leaves him listless until he sights the water again. While the father plans to rejoin them, a quiet afternoon finds the village men away, the mother dozing, and Mark slipping to the harbor, where an older boy, Legoff, leads children into a moored boat. The tide carries them out; they lose the oars and finally crash on a reef by the lone Seagull Rock, wrecking the boat. Stranded at dusk, they pool scraps of food, salvage odds and ends, and under Legoff’s command build a towering signal fire before night fear sets in and storytelling begins to keep up their courage. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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