Randy, a sturdy lad in ragged clothes, takes a job as deckhand on a Hudson River steamboat calling at towns like Nyack. He is tempted, bullied and tested, but keeps trying to help others as well as himself, in the classic Alger pattern of honesty and hard work rewarded.
Published in 1906, after Alger’s death, it shows his rags-to-respectability formula at work on the busy river of his day. Download the free EPUB.