“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, The Foremost Good Fortune
—Susan Conley, author of Landslide and, The Foremost Good Fortune
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.
“Sailing at the Edge of Disaster absolutely swept me away. Profoundly observed, richly alive with the rhythms of the sea and young adulthood, and outrageously funny, Elizabeth Garber and her misfit band of at-sea classmates taught me more in three-hundred-plus pages than I ever learned in a landlocked high school classroom. Perhaps the most powerful lesson: sometimes you have to risk it all to truly find yourself. This is a book that lives in the space where adventure, heartache, and possibility collide.”
—Gregory Brown, author of The Lowering Days
Elizabeth W. Garber is the author of Implosion: A Memoir of an Architect’s Daughter (2018). She has published three books of poetry: True Affections (2012), Listening Inside the Dance (2005), and Pierced by the Seasons (2004). Maine (Island Time) (2013) is a collaboration of her poetry with paintings and photographs of Michael Weymouth. Her essays and excerpts have appeared in Salon, Maine Homes, Johns Hopkins Magazine, and her poems have been included in several journals and anthologies. Three poems have been read on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac.
She received an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast Program, was awarded writing fellowships at Virginia Center for Creative Arts and Jentel Artist Residency, and received a BA in Humanities from Johns Hopkins and a Masters in Acupuncture from the Traditional Acupuncture Institute. She has maintained a private practice as an acupuncturist for nearly forty years in mid-coast Maine, where she raised her family. Visit her at elizabethgarber.com.
{author photo: Amy Wilton}
“A stunning memoir of a young woman’s life-changing year. Loss of innocence and newfound strength and self-knowledge is gained against harrowing dangers amidst a vivid cast of characters whose lifeworld is a ship at sea. A coming-of-age initiation tale, a true page-turner, a mashup of Outward Bound type adventure with echoes of Lord of the Flies and Ship of Fools.”
—Patricia Reis, author of Motherlines: Love, Longing and Liberation
Interested in hosting Elizabeth for a reading of her work, or interviewing her about her writing?
In Sailing at the Edge of Disaster, Elizabeth Garber has an extraordinary tale to tell, one in which she is tested again and again by circumstances that would be unbelievable if they were not true. The aplomb with which she relates this strange, exhilarating ordeal testifies to a very special perseverance. To face such an experience from the perspective of decades is to chance an uncertain reckoning. The candor and wisdom in this book speak to a hard-won grace.
—Baron Wormser, author of
The Road Washes Out in Spring