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OYSTER RIVER: One Summer on an Inland Sea by George Millar

OYSTER RIVER: One Summer on an Inland Sea

By

Pub Date: April 13th, 1964
Publisher: Knopf

old with the pip-pip, cheerful brio of an English men's-club member, Oyster River boils down to an inland voyage through Brittany. Mr. Millar bought a horse which, after several tumbles, kicked him in the head and also caused internal avoc. Ordered into three months' convalescence, he buys a 50-foot auxiliary Bermudan yawl, Amokura, and sets sail with his wife to visit the Isle de la Jument on the tip of Brittany. As a Resistance fighter during WW II he had been aided in an escape by . l'Amirale Desforges, whose late husband owned the Isle, and Millar wished to see her again. He and his wife sail through the Gulf of Morbihan and up the oyster of the Auray River. After meeting several other ships and stopping at various Islands and ports, they get mixed in with a pair of ""smugglers"" who turn out to be Algerian rebels and who try to con them out of the Amokura. The Millars give the rebels the slip by sailing upriver during a dreadful storm, but the rebels catch up again in their ship. Mr. Millar, who had informed on the rebels, finds himself liking them (through clouds of whisky). At Jument, Millar has a reunion with the formidably gregarious Mme. Desforges. Again they are overtaken, but escape in a fog and sail home... Rather jolly, and a pleasant companion piece to his earlier Isabel and the Sea and A White Boat from England.