'On February 22 we were told that we would be returning to Columbia.'

In 1955 eight crew members of Caldas a Colombian destroyer were swept overboard. Velasco alone survived drifting on a raft for ten days without food or water. Marquez retells the survivor's amazing tale of endurance from his loneliness and thirst to his determination to survive.

"The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor" was Marquez's first major work published in a Colombian newspaper "El Espectador" in 1955 and then in book form in 1970.