Wide as the Wind

Wide as the Wind is the winner of the 2017 Next Generation Indie Book Award for Young Adult Fiction, the 2017 Silver Moonbeam Children's Book Award for Young Adult Fiction - Historical/Cultural, and the 2018 silver Feathered Quill Award for Teen Fiction. Wide as the Wind was also honored in the 2018 Purple Dragonfly Book Awards in Green Books/Environmental.

The story of a boy, a girl, their island, and how they saved it.
Wide as the Wind is the first novel to deal with the stunning, tragic history of Easter Island (Vaitéa). It could be described as quest fiction for all ages in the line of Tolkien's The Hobbit, but it is set in the real world, not Middle-earth. Wide as the Wind portrays Polynesian journeys across the Pacific Ocean in canoes with no metal parts or instruments: the greatest adventure in human prehistory, as bold as modern space voyages (National Geographic).
When Vaitéa is ravaged by war, hunger and destruction, it falls upon Miru, the fifteen-year-old son of a tribal warrior, to sail to a distant island to find the seeds and shoots of trees that could reforest their homeland. If he decides to undertake the voyage, he must leave behind Kenetéa, a young woman from an enemy tribe with whom he has fallen deeply in love. And if Miru and his crew survive the storms, sharks and marauding ships that await them on a passage over uncharted ocean, an even greater mission would lie ahead. They must show their people that devotion to the earth and sea can be as strong as war and hatred. Wide as the Wind is both a stirring novel of discovery and a prophetic tale for our times.