Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibbotson is a historical children’s fiction novel published in 2002. The story takes place in the Amazon Basin in the early 1900s and follows Maia, an orphan from England who is invited to live with the Carters, distant relatives who own a rubber farm in Brazil. An English novelist known primarily for her children’s fiction, Ibbotson wrote this adventure story as a tribute to her late husband, who was a naturalist. The book won the Smarties Prize, was runner-up for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, and was also nominated for the Carnegie Medal, the Whitbread Award, and the Blue Peter Book Award.

This guide refers to the Macmillan Children’s Book Edition e-book available here.

Content Warning: This guide discusses the source text’s use of outdated and offensive terms to discuss Indigenous cultures and its portrayal of colonial stereotypes of Indigenous people. Journey to the River Sea also depicts racist attitudes.

Plot Summary

As the novel begins, Maia, whose parents were killed in a train crash in Egypt two years prior to the story’s events, is in geography class at the Mayfair Academy for Young Ladies, awaiting an important visit from the guardian of her trust fund: her parent’s lawyer, Mr. Murray. When he arrives, he tells her that he has found distant relatives who are willing to host her: the Carters and their twin daughters, Gwendolyn and Beatrice. The Carter family lives in Brazil and runs a rubber plantation. Maia’s classmates are thrilled and terrified by the idea of living in the Amazon with its exotic and dangerous wildlife and hostile locals, but Maia is determined to overcome her fear. Upon researching the area, she discovers that it is a land rich in resources, Indigenous wisdom, and natural beauty.

Maia sets sail for Brazil along with her new governess, Miss Minton, who intimidates Maia but also shares the girl’s passion for learning and books. On the boat ride, Maia befriends another young orphan called Clovis King (formerly Jimmy Bates). He is a traveling actor in a theater troupe run by his adoptive parents, the Goodleys. Clovis is desperate to return to England and his foster mother and is comforted by the company of Maia and Miss Minton, who remind him of home. When Clovis disembarks, Maia promises to visit him in Manaus and see his performance.

Maia is enthralled by the sights and sounds of the Brazilian jungle and marketplace, but when she meets the Carters, she is disappointed. Unlike Maia, who is excited to explore her new surroundings, they harbor only hostility for the land and its people, refusing to eat the local food or explore the jungle, and fearing and hating the area’s dangerous creatures and unfamiliarity. To make matters worse, Gwendolyn and Beatrice, the two young Carter girls with whom Maia had hoped to bond, cruelly bully Maia, and, like their parents, prefer to isolate themselves from the community around them.

It soon becomes apparent that the Carters exploit young Maia just as they exploit the workers on their plantation, for they only invited Maia to stay with them in order to gain access to the monthly allowance sent by her parents’ lawyer. They attempt to isolate Maia from society, keeping her inside the house and even lying to prevent her from attending Clovis’s play on their visit to Manaus. Maia’s promise to Clovis to meet him motivates her to defy their wishes, so she sneaks out to go to the theater anyway. On the way, she becomes lost in the jungle but is kindly saved by a young Brazilian boy in a canoe, who rows her to the city. (This boy is later revealed to be Finn Taverner.) At the play, Clovis’s voice cracks, and he is threatened with dismissal from the Goodley’s troupe, so he begs Maia to help him return to England.

As time goes on, Maia becomes desperately lonely in the Carter house. At the suggestion of Miss Minton, she fakes an illness to gain permission to explore the outside world. She also befriends the servants who live in the wooden huts behind the Carter property, finding comfort in their company. One day, Furo, one of the servants, blindfolds her and takes her on a mysterious boat ride to a secret lagoon, where she meets Finn, the boy from the canoe. He reveals himself to be Finn Taverner, the son of the naturalist Bernard Taverner and a local Xanti woman who died in childbirth. Finn also reveals that he is on the run from two investigators, Mr. Trapwood and Mr. Low, who have been sent by his paternal grandfather, Sir Aubrey, to bring him back to England to fulfill his role as the heir to Westwood, the Taverner estate. However, Finn is loyal to his father’s wish that he escape the restrictions of aristocracy and live freely in nature. For this reason, Finn wishes to remain hidden from the investigators and plans to sail down the Amazon “River Sea,” the Rio Negro, to look for the Xanti, his mother's tribe.

Maia introduces Finn to Clovis, and the three of them hatch a risky plan for Clovis and Finn to swap identities so that Clovis can return home to England and Finn can remain free in the jungle. With a lot of planning and a surprise assist from Miss Minton, they manage to trick the twins into revealing “Finn’s” (really Clovis’s) hiding place to the investigators, who give the twins substantial reward money for their tipoff and triumphantly bring Clovis back to England, believing him to be the Westwood heir. In England, Clovis grows accustomed to the riches of life at Westwood and reunites with his foster mother, who appeals to him to be honest and confess his true identity. However, when Clovis confesses to Sir Aubrey, the older gentleman has a heart attack and Clovis is pressured into recanting his confession, explaining that it was a joke. Sir Aubrey wishes to make Clovis his legal heir with official paperwork.

Meanwhile, in Brazil, the Carter family is facing bankruptcy due to Mr. Carter’s mismanagement and abuse of his rubber workers. The twins, who have received reward money for betraying Clovis’s hiding place to the investigators, refuse to share their wealth with their desperate parents or with each other and seek to hide it in the house. Obsessed with finding the money, Mrs. Carter squabbles with the twins one night, knocking pesticide chemicals onto a candlestick and starting a house fire that consumes the bungalow. All four of the Carters are saved and taken to the hospital, but when Miss Minton arrives to find Maia, she is told that no third girl was rescued.

Instinctively worried for Maia, Finn returns from his journey to the Xanti and discovers the charred remains of the bungalow. Feeing desperate and guilty for leaving her, he believes that she is dead until he stumbles on her in the nearby jungle; she has a gash in her leg but is otherwise unharmed. He uses his medicinal knowledge of plants to heal her leg wound and takes her away on his boat to go on the journey she had wished for before he left.

Meanwhile, out of her mind with worry, Miss Minton pairs up with Professor Glastonberry, the curator of the Natural History Museum, and hijacks the Carters’ old steamboat to follow Finn and Maia. When they are all reunited, Miss Minton realizes how happy Maia is in her current circumstances and decides to accompany the two young friends on their journey to stay with the Xanti. They all live with the Xanti for a time, until the police are alerted that they are missing and come to rescue them. Hearing of their misadventure, Mr. Murray demands that Miss Minton return Maia to England. Finn accompanies them in order to check on Clovis, who wants to ask for permission to become the legal heir to Westwood and replace Finn in the Taverner family permanently. When Miss Minton faces Mr. Murray, she appeals to him for guardianship of Maia so that they can live in Brazil and pursue a life of natural discovery and adventure. Freed from his familial burden, Finn wishes to join them. They make plans to return to their life together in the Amazon.