THE VOYAGE, by Phillip Caputo, Alfred A. Knopf, 1999, hardcover, 420 pages $26.

On a misty June morning in 1901, teen-agers Nathaniel, Drew and Eliot Braithwaite are preparing for their annual summer sailing trip in Penobscot Bay aboard the family’s schooner, Double Eagle. But their father has a surprise for them.

At the last moment, enigmatic Cyrus Braithwaite announces he’ll not be joining his sons on the trip. He then gives each of them $10 and tells them in no uncertain terms that they are not to return home until September.

“It’s a new century boys,” is his only explanation before turning his back on them. Thus begins Philip Caputo’s harrowing and exciting new novel, “The Voyage.”

Hesitant at first, the boys, ages 13 to 16, soon warm to the idea of a summer spent cruising among the Maine islands. Their plans change, however, when they pick up Nathaniel’s friend Will and decide to sail south to the Florida Keys.

They barely survive a storm off the Carolinas, but a hurricane farther south destroys the vessel and leaves them stranded in Cuba. The telegraph to their father for help brings a vague response and no assistance. When the boys finally make it home, no one in the family ever mentions the voyage.

The second level of the novel, interwoven with the main level, is the story of Cyrus’ great-granddaughter Sybil. Nearly a century later, she is determined to find out what happened that fateful summer, and begins piecing together events from the Double Eagle’s log and from the recollections of her uncle. And it is through Sybil that we discover the dark secrets of her family’s past.

Though slow to get going, the story gathers force and begins rolling along like the storms which the boys stagger through at sea. “The Voyage” is a rich and exciting yarn of sea adventures, but it is much more. It is also a wonderful coming-of-age tale, and the boys’ characters and growth over the course of the story come to life.

Caputo presents a meticulously researched, vividly believable portrait of life among the well-to-do Maine island communities of the 1900s. His nautical descriptions are thorough and convincing, and his depictions of storms are downright terrifying.

One distraction is Caputo’s attempt to render the Maine accent into print. It doesn’t ring true and comes across resembling Southern speech. But few writers and even fewer television and movie actors can pull off a convincing Maine accent, so this can easily be overlooked in light of the book’s strengths.

A lot happens in these pages, but Caputo handles it as deftly as the boys handle the Double Eagle. The Braithwaites were a family that embodied the ideals of early 20th century America: prosperity, courage and moral fortitude; but what Sybil discovers about that long-ago summer changes the way she thinks about America, her family and herself.

“The Voyage” is a powerful and thoughtful novel and readers who venture into its dark waters will remember it for some time to come.