Sailing at the Edge of Disaster: A Memoir of a Young Woman’s Daring Year
Sailing at the Edge of Disaster: A Memoir of a Young Woman’s Daring Year
by Elizabeth W. Garber
Sailing at the Edge of Disaster: A Memoir of a Young Woman’s Daring Year, is the story of how a bookish teen and her younger brother are sent by their dominating father to “shape up” on a sail training school ship, where they discover the rigors, joys, and triumphs of being at sea. As they scour the decks, learn to splice ratlines, and climb the rigging, they also survive an act of piracy, a near-sinking, and being held hostage by armed gun boats. The book chronicles a transformative year in the throes of late adolescence that leads to courage, grace, and a reclamation of selfhood.
Details:
5.5” x 8.5” Softcover book
300+ pages
Memoir
Pub Date: September 2022
“This book is a beautiful, high-stakes coming of age tale about survival on an old square-sailed rigger. It’s also a vivid, stirring reminder that again and again the natural world will reduce us to our most elemental selves and allow us to finally see and know who we are.”
—Susan Conley, author of Landslide and memoir, The Foremost Good Fortune
In 1971, Elizabeth Garber’s domineering father announced he was sending his “problem children”—seventeen-year-old bookish Elizabeth and her fourteen-year-old brother Woodie—to a school on a sailing ship, in order to “shape up and learn to work.” Sailing at the Edge of Disaster: A Memoir of a Young Woman’s Daring Year chronicles Garber’s adventures, along with the fifty teen misfits and their teacher chaperones aboard the sailing school housed on a once-magnificent yacht formerly owned by General Post heiress, socialite, and philanthropist Marjorie Merriweather Post. Sailing at the Edge of Disaster follows the journey of Oceanics School students and faculty as they motor the limping ship out of Miami to begin the grand itinerary their charismatic 25-year-old school director envisioned. Along the way, the ship survives a gale at sea, a hole in the hull at deep water, an act of piracy, a near-miss with a nuclear sub, and are held hostage by armed gun boats in Panama.
The heart of this coming-of-age story is how Elizabeth emerged from her emotionally battered teens and grew self-reliant and courageous. By the time Elizabeth returned home, she’d gained the courage needed to stand up to her father and claim her own life.
