This slim book is about not only an adventurous young Polish American in the 1920s, but a period of history that has been eclipsed by both Charles Lindbergh’s flight earlier that decade and the Great Depression that followed. The main event here is Commander Richard Byrd’s voyage to, and flight over, the South Pole, told through the eyes of a stubborn stowaway, Billy Gawronski.

Author Laurie Gwen Shapiro stumbled onto the story of this young New Yorker, who fell in love with the notion of the Antarctic and wouldn’t be dissuaded by his parents’ refusal to let him apply for a spot on one of the ships in the southward-bound flotilla. He determined to sneak onto the boat and --- even when he was caught and sent home --- snuck back again and again, until Commander Byrd himself agreed to let him come aboard.

"Bookended by exploration on one side and the Great Depression on the other, this is an absorbing tale."

Shapiro uses Billy’s shipboard experiences as an opportunity to describe what life was like for those intrepid seamen who accompanied Byrd. They weren’t the first ones to reach the South Pole --- Roald Amundsen had done so in 1912--- nor was Byrd the first to fly over Antarctica. William Randolph Hearst funded an Australian, Hubert Wilkins, and attempted to downplay Byrd’s accomplishments in order to highlight Wilkins’. But the American, who was a successful self-promoter with important sponsors, became the focus of the public’s adulation.

Billy went only to the Ross Ice Shelf, sailing back before the rest of the crew settled in for the winter. He returned the following year to pick them up, but was frustrated not to live in “Little America,” the village that he helped build for those who stayed behind.

When he --- and they --- returned to the States in 1929, a ticker tape parade greeted them, and the press lionized them, especially Billy, whose story captured the public’s imagination.  But shortly afterward, the stock market crashed, and Byrd spent the next several years trying to help his men find work, even as he was raising funding for the next expedition. Billy, giving up on the notion of another Antarctic voyage, attended Columbia University but soon had to drop out. He ended up on the Merchant Marines, where he had a distinguished career.

THE STOWAWAY is a book about one man’s brush with history, and how that changed the course of his life. But first-time author Shapiro has used Billy’s story to familiarize the reader with a fascinating period in early 20th-century history. Bookended by exploration on one side and the Great Depression on the other, this is an absorbing tale.