Maine author Elizabeth Garber will share the captivating story of how her father sent her and her brother on a sail training school ship to “shape up.” They joined fifty teen misfits in learning to sail and, during their travels, encountered a gale at sea, a near sinking, and an encounter with armed gun boats in Panama. Garber will discuss the thrilling tale, chronicled in her new book, Sailing at the Edge of Disaster; copies of the book will be available for purchase.
From Susan Conley, author of Landslide: “This book is a beautiful, high-stakes coming of age tale about survival on an old square-sailed rigger that sets out across the sea. It’s also a vivid, stirring reminder that again and again the natural world will reduce us to our most elemental and allow us to finally see ourselves and know who we are.”
Elizabeth W. Garber is the author of Sailing at the Edge of Disaster: A Memoir of a Young Woman’s Daring Year (2022), and 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). Her essays and excerpts have appeared in Salon, Maine Homes, Johns Hopkins Magazine, and her poems have been included in several journals and anthologies. She received an MFA in creative nonfiction from University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast Program and has maintained a private practice as an acupuncturist for nearly forty years in mid-coast Maine, where she raised her family.
FMI or for Zoom links: email elewis@rocklandmaine.gov.