Lucy Mae, the narrator of this story, is an orangutan from the island of Borneo. To protect her from the poachers who threatened her life, Lucy"s father smuggled her aboard a U.S. Navy ship bound for America. In Chicago, with the aid of her new, human, parents and the mysteries of animism and chemistry, Lucy Mae overcomes the limits of her 97% human DNA to become fully human. Lucy Mae"s new mom is a teacher and her dad is a reporter who is writing a novel set in Antarctica. The novel is the impetus for their trip to the bottom of the world on a sailboat with a woman who owns the boat and who threatens the marriage of Lucy s new dad and her mom, who cannot leave her school to go with them. Pirates attack the boat off the coast of Peru and ice damages one of the boat"s propellers in the Bay of Whales. Lucy Mae"s new mom is an alcoholic and it is the amethyst given to Lucy Mae by her mother in Borneo that becomes the cure for her new mom"s illness.