The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle is a historical novel by the American writer Avi, published in 1990 and written for readers in the middle school years. It is narrated by its heroine as a confession, which means the reader knows from the first page that the voyage ended in a court and a scandal.

Charlotte Doyle boards the Seahawk in England expecting a comfortable crossing and finds a crew at the end of its patience with a brutal captain. She is drawn into the ship's discipline and into the argument between the captain and the men who intend to take the vessel, and the book keeps its central question open: who is telling the truth, and what is a girl of thirteen obliged to do about it.

Avi builds the novel around the voyage and uses the ship as a small society with its own laws, which lets him test Charlotte's assumptions about class and gender without ever leaving the deck. The book was named a Newbery Honor book in 1991.