In the late 1920s, New York City teenager Billy Gawronski was headed toward a very dull future. His father had built a successful upholstering business and slated Billy as his future partner. Billy had other plans. Entranced by adventurous tales of the great expeditioners of his time, Billy heard of Commander Byrd's intention to mount an expedition to Antarctica and saw his way out. But with thousands already clamoring to join Byrd, and Billy needing parental consent, the odds were against him. Thus, with only the clothes on his back, Billy swam out and boarded one of Byrd's ships in the wee morning hours as a stowaway. Exposed to new ports and places on his journey, Gawronski became the unexpected darling of the press and returned home with his true calling. Novelist and filmmaker Shapiro (The Anglophile, 2005) has revived the history of a once-celebrated stowaway to Antarctica in this well-wrought true tale of a young man who captured the hearts of millions and found adventure at sea.--Shaw, Stacy Copyright 2017 Booklist

I HAVE AN ACTIVE FANTASY that kicks in around tax time - don't we all? - of smuggling myself out of my own life. In this fantasy, I set up a cardboard replica of myself in the kitchen, with a soundtrack that repeats the question, How would you like your eggs cooked today, kids? - and then send my actual self in a crate to a South Pacific island, where many adventures ensue, catalyzed by umbreila drinks. The idea of stowing away must be as ancient as the first human hitching a ride on a seafaring vessel out of old Mesopotamia, but in the covfefe clatter of our times, I find myself more and more fixated on such stories: The 23-year-old in the wheel well of a plane ride from New Delhi to London whose body temperature dropped, causing him to pass out until he regained consciousness on the ground at Heathrow. Or the Illinois woman who in 2016 sneaked onto a flight from Chicago to London, without a ticket or passport. Or the bizarre case of the young Chinese man several years back who disguised himself as an old man, with a wrinkled mask, and took a flight from Hong Kong to Vancouver, pleading for asylum after being discovered. Stowing away - whether driven by evil regimes, longing, mental illness or a deep desire for adventure - has always been a means for transformation. And if the stowaway's story essentially begins as an escape fantasy, there's something aspirational in such desperation. The audacity of stripping yourself bare and stage-diving into unknown hands, in an unknown land, is heady tonic. Which is what makes the real-life, wouldbe gate-crasher in Laurie Gwen Shapiro's "The Stowaway" - 17-year-old Billy Gawronski - such an incorrigible if symbolic character, a first-generation American living in 1920s New York City who wants to join the famous polar explorer Richard Byrd on his journey to Antarctica. (While Roald Amundsen was the first to reach the South Pole in 1911, Byrd's stated purpose, 17 years later, was to be the first to haul a plane there to fly over the pole.) The only problem is that Billy has zero experience with anything but his father's budding upholstery business in Brooklyn. Seeing his future in damask brocade and mohair, he wants nothing to do with it. Zilch. Meanwhile, his Polish grandmother has gazed into her actual crystal ball and seen Billy cavorting with Admiral Byrd. The backdrop for Billy's bildungsroman is that moment when America, too, is finding itself amid great social upheaval: Consumer culture, mass entertainment and the Industrial Age are all on the rise, while Jazz Age journalism (in some ways not so different from our modern iteration of infotainment) is hungry for new heroes. Stowing away, then, becomes a means to celebrity as well, and is a bit of a cottage industry unto itself. And so Billy leaps into the Hudson River in a night move to get on board one of the three ships headed south. All goes well until Billy finds two other stowaways squirreled in the same front berth. Their eventual squabbling draws the attention of crew members who unceremoniously remove all three. Only when the press gets wind of it does Byrd himself, always looking for publicity and funding, seem to realize there might be a payoff in this stowaway game. Still, Billy's father eventually arrives to drag his son home. Here Shapiro's story, which is a bit slow to take hold, might have dead-ended, if not for Billy's determination. After trying to board the second ship, and getting caught again, Billy hitchhikes to Norfolk, Va., the next port of call, in time to wave in the party from the dock. Shapiro tells us the ship's cook is "tickled by the city kid's pluck," and puts him to work in the kitchen. Byrd approves the move, and with a New York Times reporter on board to chronicle every hiccup of the expedition, including the doings of the Polish-American stowaway, they're off to see the penguins. The tale that follows doesn't raise Billy above what he is, a bit player who in the end isn't chosen to winter with Byrd on the frozen continent, but he's not without his moments of heroism, and besides, to the consuming public at home, substance here matters less than the quixotic journey. For this brief moment, Shapiro's Billy is our Bachelor, our YouTtibe star. He's the kid who frees himself from destiny to forge his own, leapfrogging class, symbolizing our wanderlust and the power of imagination over expectation. Ultimately, the stumbles in "The Stowaway" - including the skimming quality of the prose (Billy's first wife is "a spicy gal" and wears "tantalizing clothes that soon came off" while the ship deck smells of "masculine adventure") - are overshadowed by Shapiro's hustle in resurrecting Billy, and a number of side characters, including my favorite, an African-American stowaway named Bob Lanier, who chases the expedition all the way to New Zealand. In an author's note at the end of this book, Shapiro points us to her own discovery of Billy's second wife, whom she found alive and ready to tell Billy's story. "The Stowaway," then, is like an intriguing photo album brought out from the bottom drawer: If the gaps between images sometimes frustrate, the granular detail can fascinate. It shows us who we are, and what we're trying to escape. Michael paterniti is a contributing writer at The Times Magazine and a correspondent at GQ. He is at work on his latest book of nonfiction, "Ninety or Nothing," about the discovery of the North Pole.

The story of an adventurous boy who captured America's imagination in an age of significant exploration.During the 1920s, when the spirit of adventure surged through the country, nobody felt it more strongly than Billy Gawronski, the first-generation son of Polish immigrants. Even in high school, he appeared fated for a life in his father's business, but Billy not only had other plans, he had the determination to see them through. He idolized Cmdr. Richard Byrd and ached to join what was heralded as a historic voyage to Antarctica during a time when America's appetite for such adventure had been whetted by the exploits of Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart. Billy collected news stories about Byrd's expedition, of which there were many, for this was as much a public relations campaign as it was an exploring expedition, with the Byrd camp feeding reporters what their readers wanted. "Was anyone more determined than Billy to hitch a ride on the most famous rig in America?" asks journalist and documentary filmmaker Shapiro's book debut. "It was the bold, he was certain, who won the right to adventure." Billy was bold, but he was by no means alone, as he discovered on his first stowaway attempt that others had had the same idea. All of them were discovered, captured, and taken off the ship. But Billy persisted, following the ship from its New York launch down the coast to Virginia, far from his home, where he continued to try to join the expedition and continued to be rejected. He was remanded to police custody on his third attempt, but his persistence ultimately paid off, as Byrd and the newspapers caught wind of his story and decided to make it a highlight. So Billy joined the crew, and his determination changed the course of his life. This book isn't so much a seafaring adventure as a getting-to-sea adventure, but it ultimately reveals as much about a country's changing values as it does about one boy's pluck.Thoroughly researched, but the narrative reads like a yarn from that era. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

In this true-life adventure yarn, filmmaker Shapiro reconstructs the story of Billy Gawronski, who captured the boundless optimism of the American national psyche in the lead up to the Great Depression when, in 1928, he attempted to stow away on a ship headed to the Antarctic. The enthusiastic 18-year-old was caught trying to sneak onboard three times before he could finally convince his hero, commander Richard Byrd, to let him join as a mess boy aboard the Eleanor Bolling en route to the South Pole. Shapiro interweaves snippets of Russell Owen's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the expedition for the New York Times into the main narrative, which tracks Billy's progression from being a reckless stowaway to commanding a ship in WWII. In the characters of Billy and his shipmates, Shapiro finds a "microcosm of American barriers and dreams." This coming-of-age story about a strong-willed boy with an insatiable appetite for adventure is evocative of the Hardy Boys and will appeal to both adult and young adult readers. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Shapiro, in her first full-length work of nonfiction, deftly tells the story of Billy -Gawronski, a young boy determined to seek adventure. Through reading novels and following the events of real-life explorers, Gawronski cultivated a knowledge of and insatiable desire for risk-taking. In 1928, at the age of 17, Gawronski's ambition was fulfilled. During the height of the Jazz Age, Richard Byrd, a famous American explorer and idol to Gawronski, led an expedition to Antarctica. Byrd intended to be the first person to fly over the South Pole. At this point, the United States had largely been absent from Antarctic exploration. Byrd was already a household name and the country was excited. One night, Gawronski swam across New York's Hudson River and climbed on board Byrd's ship. He was found with two other stowaways and sent home. After several more of these kinds of attempts, Gawronski won the respect of Byrd and was hired on as part of the crew. VERDICT This fascinating and exciting story contrasts the optimism and sense of progress of the 1920s with the devastation of the 1930s. Readers of popular history and biographies will find much to delight in here.-Timothy Berge, SUNY Oswego Lib. © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.