The Incredible Journey

The Incredible Journey is a children's novel by the Scottish-born writer Sheila Burnford, published in 1960. It follows three family pets across the Canadian wilderness.

The animals belong to a family in the north-west of Ontario, a country of lakes, rivers and small farms, and they are left behind with a friend when the family has to travel. The Labrador is young and strong, the bull terrier is old and tiring, and the Siamese cat is the least equipped for a long walk and the least willing to be left out of one. When the arrangement breaks down, the three of them turn for home and keep going. Burnford is careful about what the journey costs them: they go hungry, they are injured, they meet people who help and people who do not, and the weather is never generous. The pleasure of the book lies in the detail of how they travel and how they stay together, and in the way the author treats their loyalty and their stubbornness as facts rather than as sentiment.

Burnford wrote the novel for children, and it has been read ever since as a story measured in hunger, weather and miles rather than in adventure for its own sake.